[Python-ideas] New explicit methods to trim strings

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, Mar 31, 2019 at 04:48:36PM +1100, Chris Angelico wrote:

> Regardless of the method name, IMO the functions should accept a tuple
> of test strings, as startswith/endwith do. That's a feature that can't
> easily be spelled in a one-liner. (Though stacked suffixes shouldn't
> all be removed - "asdf.jpg.png".cutsuffix((".jpg", ".png")) should
> return "asdf.jpg", not "asdf".)

There's a slight problem with that: what happens if more than one suffix 
matches? E.g. given:

    "musical".lcut(('al', 'ical'))

should the suffix "al" be removed, leaving "music"? (First match wins.)

Or should the suffix "ical" be removed, leaving "mus"? (Longest match 
wins.)

I don't think we can decide which is better, and I'm not keen on a 
keyword argument to choose one or the other, so I suggest we stick to 
the 90% solution of only supporting a single suffix.

We can always revisit that in the future.


-- 
Steven