Removing first x characters from string?

Question

How might one remove the first x characters from a string? For example, if one had a string lipsum, how would they remove the first 3 characters and get a result of sum?

better example if the number of characters removed wasn't equal to the number of characters to remain. e.g. `"lipsumm"[3:] == "summ"` — Scott Pelak, Mar 27 '17 at 14:43

jamylak · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-04T10:50:39.820

261

>>> text = 'lipsum'
>>> text[3:]
'sum'

See the official documentation on strings for more information and this SO answer for a concise summary of the notation.

edited Feb 04 '18 at 10:50

answered Aug 04 '12 at 06:45

jamylak

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score 24 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 24 '19 at 14:39

24

Another way (depending on your actual needs): If you want to pop the first n characters and save both the popped characters and the modified string:

s = 'lipsum'
n = 3
a, s = s[:n], s[n:]
print(a)
# lip
print(s)
# sum

edited Jan 24 '19 at 14:39

phoenix

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answered Dec 18 '13 at 17:10

Ken A

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I guess it's metaphorically "popped" but actually its just 2 different slices, no real popping – jamylak Feb 16 '18 at 02:51

score 13 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 04 '12 at 06:45

13

>>> x = 'lipsum'
>>> x.replace(x[:3], '')
'sum'

answered Aug 04 '12 at 06:45

tkbx

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Note that this is longer in code and will also take more time since you have to search for the substring before you replace it. Also: `>>> x = 'liplip'` `>>> x.replace(x[:3], '')` `''`. Sure you could fix this by having the third parameter (count) = 1 but it would still take longer. – jamylak Aug 04 '12 at 06:58
nah it's related to your answer so it belongs here. You can add count=1 to yours so that it still works btw – jamylak Aug 04 '12 at 07:11

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 19 '20 at 11:24

4

Use del.

Example:

>>> text = 'lipsum'
>>> l = list(text)
>>> del l[3:]
>>> ''.join(l)
'sum'

edited Feb 19 '20 at 11:24

ClimateUnboxed

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answered Oct 19 '18 at 05:58

U13-Forward

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This doesn't work like you'd think `text = 'liplip'` `>>> text.lstrip(text[:3])` `''` because for one [`str.lstrip([chars])`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html) _The chars argument is not a prefix; rather, all combinations of its values are stripped:_ – jamylak Jan 28 '20 at 11:39
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Neither of the solutions work eg. for `'liplip'`. In the second one `TypeError: 'str' object does not support item deletion` – jamylak Jan 28 '20 at 11:44
The 1st solution still does not work for the `'liplip'` example and the 2nd solution has overcomplicated everything. It's really hard to improve the simple inbuilt `text[3:]` – jamylak Jan 29 '20 at 11:45
hello U10-Forward, hope you don't mind, but I deleted the first solution posted as it was indeed incorrect for a general string. The solution deleted *all* instances of the first x characters if the string contained repeats and thus could cause a bug if used. – ClimateUnboxed Feb 19 '20 at 11:26

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 16 '18 at 06:37

1

Example to show last 3 digits of account number.

x = '1234567890'   
x.replace(x[:7], '')

o/p: '890'

edited Feb 16 '18 at 06:37

Byron Coetsee

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answered Dec 13 '16 at 10:21

Pratik Jaswant

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This has the same issue as the answer by tkbx – jamylak Feb 16 '18 at 01:37
eg. `>>> x = '12345678901234567890'` `>>> x.replace(x[:7], 'xxxxxxx')` `'xxxxxxx890xxxxxxx890'` – jamylak Feb 16 '18 at 02:49
Also this doesn't even answer the question, you are replacing characters with `x`s instead of deleting them – jamylak Feb 16 '18 at 02:50

Removing first x characters from string?

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