From: Harry Ohlsen <harryo@...>
Date: 2003-11-19T09:03:54+09:00
Subject: Re: String startswith/endswith in Ruby?

Hi David,

> s = 'Hello, world!'
> s.startswith('Hello')    >> true
> s.endswith('!')          >> true
> s.endswith('asdf')       >> false

How about this ...

  s =~ /^Hello/   # => true
  s =~ /!$/       # => true
  s =~ /asdf$/    # => false

While using a regex to do something so simple seems a bit excessive, looking for a value at the start or end of a string is really just a special case of a more general problem, which regex matching solves very neatly.

Hence, one can attack this kind of thing in a uniform manner.

Cheers,

Harry O.