How good is startswith?

Question

Is

text.startswith(\'a\')  

better than

text[0]==\'a\'  

?

Knowing text is not empty and we a

Answer 1

PEP 8 explicitly tells to use startswith, because of readability:

- Use ''.startswith() and ''.endswith() instead of string

slicing to check for prefixes or suffixes.

  startswith() and endswith() are cleaner and less error prone.  For
  example:

    Yes: if foo.startswith('bar'):

    No:  if foo[:3] == 'bar':