how to avoid leading white spaces

[Roy Smith]

In article <94ph22FrhvU5 at mid.individual.net>,
 Neil Cerutti <neilc at norwich.edu> wrote:

> On 2011-06-01, rurpy at yahoo.com <rurpy at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > For some odd reason (perhaps because they are used a lot in
> > Perl), this groups seems to have a great aversion to regular
> > expressions. Too bad because this is a typical problem where
> > their use is the best solution.
> 
> Python's str methods, when they're sufficent, are usually more
> efficient.

I was all set to say, "prove it!" when I decided to try an experiment.  
Much to my surprise, for at least one common case, this is indeed 
correct.

-------------------------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/env python                                                                                             

import timeit

text = '''Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing                                                      
elit. Mauris congue risus et purus lobortis facilisis. In                                                         
nec quam dolor, non blandit tellus. Suspendisse tempus,                                                           
sapien ac mattis volutpat, lectus elit auctor lacus, vitae                                                        
accumsan nunc elit in ligula. Curabitur quis mauris                                                               
neque. Etiam auctor eleifend arcu in egestas. Pellentesque                                                        
non mauris sit amet nulla aliquam hendrerit pretium id                                                            
arcu. Ut fringilla tempor lorem eget tincidunt. Duis nibh                                                         
nisi, iaculis sed scelerisque in, facilisis quis                                                                  
dui. Aliquam varius diam in turpis auctor dapibus. Fusce                                                          
aliquet erat vestibulum mauris volutpat id laoreet enim                                                           
fermentum. Nam at justo nibh, ut vulputate dui.                                                                   
libero. Nunc ac risus justo, in sodales erat.                                                                     
'''
text = ' '.join(text.split())

t1 = timeit.Timer("'laoreet' in text",
                 "text = '%s'" % text)
t2 = timeit.Timer("pattern.search(text)",
                  "import re; pattern = re.compile('laoreet'); text = 
'%s'" % text)
print t1.timeit()
print t2.timeit()
-------------------------------------------------
./contains.py
0.990975856781
1.91417002678
-------------------------------------------------

> Perl integrated regular expressions, while Python relegated them
> to a library.

The same way Python relegates most everything to a library :-)