How do I find if a string starts with another string in Ruby?

Question

What the best way to find if a string starts with another in Ruby (without rails)?

Answer 1

Since there are several methods presented here, I wanted to figure out which one was fastest. Using Ruby 1.9.3p362:

irb(main):001:0> require 'benchmark'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> Benchmark.realtime { 1.upto(10000000) { "foobar"[/\Afoo/] }}
=> 12.477248
irb(main):003:0> Benchmark.realtime { 1.upto(10000000) { "foobar" =~ /\Afoo/ }}
=> 9.593959
irb(main):004:0> Benchmark.realtime { 1.upto(10000000) { "foobar"["foo"] }}
=> 9.086909
irb(main):005:0> Benchmark.realtime { 1.upto(10000000) { "foobar".start_with?("foo") }}
=> 6.973697

So it looks like start_with? ist the fastest of the bunch.

Updated results with Ruby 2.2.2p95 and a newer machine:

require 'benchmark'
Benchmark.bm do |x|
  x.report('regex[]')    { 10000000.times { "foobar"[/\Afoo/] }}
  x.report('regex')      { 10000000.times { "foobar" =~ /\Afoo/ }}
  x.report('[]')         { 10000000.times { "foobar"["foo"] }}
  x.report('start_with') { 10000000.times { "foobar".start_with?("foo") }}
end

            user       system     total       real
regex[]     4.020000   0.000000   4.020000 (  4.024469)
regex       3.160000   0.000000   3.160000 (  3.159543)
[]          2.930000   0.000000   2.930000 (  2.931889)
start_with  2.010000   0.000000   2.010000 (  2.008162)