Question

I have 2 strings e.g.

str1 = 'section1.1:  this is a heading for section 1'

and

str2 = 'section1.1:  this is a heading for section 1.1'

I want to compare the text which comes after ‘section1.1:’ and return whether it is the same or not. In the example it would return false as the first says section 1 and the second says section 1.1

The first piece of the string can be anything e.g. subsection2.5: but always ends with a :

What is the best way to do this using Python?

Answer 1

Use the split method of the strings to split on only the first ::

>>> str1 = 'section1.1:  this is a heading for section 1'
>>> str2 = 'section1.1:  this is a heading for section 1.1'
>>> str1.split(':', 1)[1]
'  this is a heading for section 1'
>>> str2.split(':', 1)[1]
'  this is a heading for section 1.1'