Drowning in a teacup?

[Vito De Tullio]

Fillmore wrote:

> I need to scan a list of strings. If one of the elements matches the
> beginning of a search keyword, that element needs to snap to the front
> of the list.

I know this post regards the function passing, but, on you specific problem, 
can't you just ... sort the list with a custom key?

something like (new list)

    >>> sorted(['no_a', 'yes_c', 'no_b', 'yes_z', 'no_y', 'yes_x'],
    ...         key=lambda e: not e.startswith('yes'))
    ['yes_c', 'yes_z', 'yes_x', 'no_a', 'no_b', 'no_y']

or (in place)

    >>> l = ['no_a', 'yes_c', 'no_b', 'yes_z', 'no_y', 'yes_x']
    >>> l.sort(key=lambda e: not e.startswith('yes'))
    >>> l
    ['yes_c', 'yes_z', 'yes_x', 'no_a', 'no_b', 'no_y']



-- 
By ZeD