Python: startswith any alpha character

If you want to match non-ASCII letters as well, you can use str.isalpha:

if line and line[0].isalpha():

You can pass a tuple to startswiths() (in Python 2.5+) to match any of its elements:

import string
ALPHA = string.ascii_letters
if line.startswith(tuple(ALPHA)):
    pass

Of course, for this simple case, a regex test or the in operator would be more readable.

An easy solution would be to use the python regex module:

import re
if re.match("^[a-zA-Z]+.*", line):
   Do Something

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