Re: `compare-strings' style question

[Kevin Rodgers <kevin.d.rodgers@gmail.com>]

tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> In Elisp, I'm trying to test whether a string is a prefix of another.
> Poking around the documentation, I stumbled upon `compare-strings',
> which seems to do the job fairly well. The interface is a bit weird
> (at least as seen from Lisp) It feels more like C's strcmp.
> 
> It returns t on exact match, and some numbers on mismatch. I understand
> that the result might be useful in some cases (it tells one by how many
> chars we miss a match), but then I can't just do
> 
>   (when (compare-strings foo 0 5 bar 0 5)
>     ...)
> 
> but must do
> 
> 
>   (when (eq (compare-strings foo 0 5 bar 0 5) t)
>     ...)
> 
> which looks rather funny. My question: are there better idioms? Am I
> barking up the wrong function?

(when (string-match (concat "^" (regexp-quote foo)) bar)
   ...)

-- 
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA