Checking if string starts with list element

[Simon Brunning]

I have a list of strings:
romans = ['aqueduct', 'sanitation', 'roads', 'irrigation', 'medicine',
'education', 'wine', 'public baths', 'order']

And I have a single string:
us = 'wine, women and song.'

I want to know whether my sting *starts with* one of the strings in my list.
The best that I can do is something like:

for roman in romans:
    if string.find(us, roman) == 0:
        # do stuff
        break

The trouble is that in the code I'm writing, the list has a hundred or so
elements, and it's running too slowly. Any suggestions?

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk





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