`strip` Python method non-obvious behavior

Question

I was surprised about strip Python method behavior:

>>> 'https://texample.com'.strip('https://')
'example.com'

It was not obvious, because usually I use strip with an one-char argument.

This is because of

The chars argument is a string specifying the set of characters to be removed

(https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#str.strip).

What is the best way to delete a "head" of a string?

Answer 1

you have 3 options:

1. use string.replace instead of string.strip
2. startswith method:

    if line.startswith("'https://"):
        return line[8:]

3. split:

    if "/" in line:
        param, value = line.split("/",1)