str.startswith and str.endswith should accept multiple arguments.

[Elizacat]

BPO	24047
Nosy	@vstinner, @ezio-melotti, @ethanfurman, @serhiy-storchaka

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

Show more details

GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2015-04-24.07:09:58.164>
created_at = <Date 2015-04-24.05:49:07.290>
labels = ['interpreter-core', 'type-feature', 'expert-unicode']
title = 'str.startswith and str.endswith should accept multiple arguments.'
updated_at = <Date 2015-04-24.07:09:58.156>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/Elizacat'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2015-04-24.07:09:58.156>
actor = 'serhiy.storchaka'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2015-04-24.07:09:58.164>
closer = 'serhiy.storchaka'
components = ['Interpreter Core', 'Unicode']
creation = <Date 2015-04-24.05:49:07.290>
creator = 'Elizacat'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 24047
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['241912', '241915', '241918']
nosy_count = 5.0
nosy_names = ['vstinner', 'ezio.melotti', 'ethan.furman', 'serhiy.storchaka', 'Elizacat']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'rejected'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue24047'
versions = ['Python 3.5']

[Elizacat]

str.startswith and str.endswith should accept multiple arguments when passing in strings. This makes it easier to check if the first character of a string is one of a given option, versus this awkward construction:

>>> f = 'abc'
>>> 'test'.startswith(tuple(f))
False

With my proposal, this could be shortened to 'test'.startswith(*f) for easy testing.

This also makes it easier to check if a string begins with one of any combination of matches.

[ethanfurman]

We can already do

--> some_string.starts_with(('innie','minnie', 'minie', 'moe'))

Your proposal appears to be equivalent to:

--> 'test'.startswith(('a', 'b', 'c'))

How often do you check to see if a string starts with only a single character?

-1

tuple() is the correct solution to this problem.

[serhiy-storchaka]

This proposition conflicts with optional parameters of str.startswith().

>>> 'test'.startswith(('a', 'b', 'c'), 1, 3)
False