How do you translate this regular-expression idiom from Perl into Python?

Question

I switched from Perl to Python about a year ago and haven\'t looked back. There is only one idiom that I\'ve ever found I can do more easily in Perl than in Python:<

Answer 1

Alternatively, something not using regular expressions at all:

prefix, data = var[:3], var[3:]
if prefix == 'foo':
    # do something with data
elif prefix == 'bar':
    # do something with data
elif prefix == 'baz':
    # do something with data
else:
    # do something with var

Whether that is suitable depends on your actual problem. Don't forget, regular expressions aren't the swiss army knife that they are in Perl; Python has different constructs for doing string manipulation.