How do I use the if statement for input starting with a certain letter

Question

I am trying to print a certain output if the user's input (greet) begins with a certain word "hello" else if the input begins with h using the if statement.

I have tried:

if greet == "hello":
    print("wrong") 
elif greet == "h_" #(but not hello)
    print(" okay")
else: 
    print("good")

Does this answer your question? [Checking whether a string starts with XXXX](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8802860/checking-whether-a-string-starts-with-xxxx) — mkrieger1, Jul 27 '22 at 17:05
@gimix `greet == "h_"` does not check if `greet` starts with `"h"`. — John Kugelman, Jul 27 '22 at 17:06
That's for sure :D I only suggested to OP that they first of all polish their code, since in its initial form it was not even Python correct code — gimix, Jul 27 '22 at 17:33

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 27 '22 at 17:06

1

You could also use .startswith():

if greet.startswith("hello"):
    print("wrong")
elif greet.startswith("h"):
    print("okay")
else:
    print("good")

answered Jul 27 '22 at 17:06

ewz93

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This is the best answer towards what OP asked. My answer had all kinds of checks for lower/upper, if nothing was entered, and if a space was the first entered character.....but OP didn't ask for any of that. – Michael S. Jul 27 '22 at 17:27

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 27 '22 at 17:45

Try this. It ignores leading and trailing spaces by calling strip, it has a conditional for if nothing was placed in the input, and lastly it's case insensitive because it standardizes the input to lower:

greet = input().strip()

if len(greet) > 0:
    firstWord = greet.split(" ")[0].lower()
    if firstWord == 'hello':
        print("wrong")
    elif firstWord[0] == "h":
        print("ok")
    else:
        print("good")
else:
    print("You must enter something")

How do I use the if statement for input starting with a certain letter

2 Answers2