Finding whether a string starts with one of a list's variable-length prefixes

Question

I need to find out whether a name starts with any of a list's prefixes and then remove it, like:

if name[:2] in ["i_", "c_", "m_", "l_", "d_", "t_", "e_", "b_"]:
    name = name[2:]

The above only works for list prefixes with a length of two. I need the same functionality for variable-length prefixes.

How is it done efficiently (little code and good performance)?

A for loop iterating over each prefix and then checking name.startswith(prefix) to finally slice the name according to the length of the prefix works, but it's a lot of code, probably inefficient, and "non-Pythonic".

Does anybody have a nice solution?

Answer 1

str.startswith(prefix[, start[, end]])¶

Return True if string starts with the prefix, otherwise return False. prefix can also be a tuple of prefixes to look for. With optional start, test string beginning at that position. With optional end, stop comparing string at that position.

$ ipython
Python 3.5.2 (default, Nov 23 2017, 16:37:01)
Type 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more information
IPython 6.4.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python. Type '?' for help.

In [1]: prefixes = ("i_", "c_", "m_", "l_", "d_", "t_", "e_", "b_")

In [2]: 'test'.startswith(prefixes)
Out[2]: False

In [3]: 'i_'.startswith(prefixes)
Out[3]: True

In [4]: 'd_a'.startswith(prefixes)
Out[4]: True