[triangle-zpug] how to match strings in python

[philip at semanchuk.com]

Quoting Joseph Mack NA3T <jmack at wm7d.net>:

> I've looked in the string methods/functions in the python docs and I
> can't see how to do what I want, which is to find the parts of strings
> that match. eg
>
>
> string_1 = "foobar"
> string_2 = "foobaz"
>
> matched_string = "fooba"
>
> I need to walk along the string(s) 1 char at a time, accepting matching
> letters, till I get a mismatch, when the code exits. I was expecting to
> be able to retrieve chars one at a time from each of the two strings
> and test if the chars were the same.

And did you find that this expectation failed you? The code below  
works, but it assumes that you want to match from the first character  
onwards. I'm not sure I adequately understand what you're trying to do.



string_1 = "foobar"
string_2 = "foobaz"

max_length = min(len(string_1), len(string_2))

matches = [ ]

i = 0
done = False
while not done:
     if i < max_length:
         if string_1[i] == string_2[i]:
             matches.append(string_1[i])
         else:
             done = True
     else:
         done = True

     i += 1


print ''.join(matches)