'Does Ruby have a string.startswith("abc") built in method?

Does Ruby have a some_string.starts_with("abc") method that's built in?



Solution 1:[1]

It's called String#start_with?, not String#startswith: In Ruby, the names of boolean-ish methods end with ? and the words in method names are separated with an _. On Rails you can use the alias String#starts_with? (note the plural - and note that this method is deprecated). Personally, I'd prefer String#starts_with? over the actual String#start_with?

Solution 2:[2]

Your question title and your question body are different. Ruby does not have a starts_with? method. Rails, which is a Ruby framework, however, does, as sepp2k states. See his comment on his answer for the link to the documentation for it.

You could always use a regular expression though:

if SomeString.match(/^abc/) 
   # SomeString starts with abc

^ means "start of string" in regular expressions

Solution 3:[3]

If this is for a non-Rails project, I'd use String#index:

"foobar".index("foo") == 0  # => true

Solution 4:[4]

You can use String =~ Regex. It returns position of full regex match in string.

irb> ("abc" =~ %r"abc") == 0
=> true
irb> ("aabc" =~ %r"abc") == 0
=> false

Sources

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Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 David Ljung Madison Stellar
Solution 2 Nakilon
Solution 3 Lars Haugseth
Solution 4 Nakilon