nicer way to remove prefix of a string if it exists

[Tim Chase]

On 07/13/2010 09:22 PM, Shashwat Anand wrote:
>>   You could write:
>>
>>     rsl = f[len(prefix):] if f.startswith(prefix) else f
>
> Or you can just do split and join, "".join(f.split(prefix, 1)) will do.

This suggestion breaks if the prefix occurs within the string 
rather than at the beginning:

   f = "this has file:// inside it"
   prefix = "file://"

So your suggestion really just operates like

   f.replace(prefix, '', 1)

-tkc