[Tutor] Re: print out lines that start with a word

[Wolfram Kraus]

Ron Nixon wrote:
> Can anyone tell me what I've done wrong in this
> script.
> 
> I'm trying to get only the lines that start with
> "This" for a text file.
> 
> Here's what I wrote:
> 
> 
>>>>import re
>>>>f = open('c:/lines.txt').readlines()
>>>>for line in f:
> 
> 	match = re.search('^This',f)
> 	if line == match:
> 		print match
> 
> 
Pardon my ignorance, but why is everybody fond of regexps ;-) ? Are they 
faster? What about good ol' startswith(): 
http://docs.python.org/lib/string-methods.html#l2h-204
Untested:

f = open('c:/lines.txt').readlines()
for line in f:
   if line.startswith('This'):
     print line # Or whatever match is, no regexp-expert here, sorry

Wondering,
Wolfram