No PR is attached since the issue is pretty trivial to reproduce but important nonetheless:

string = "LDA/AIC2/1919uc1b354363457"
print(string)
print(string.lstrip("LDA/"))

the stripped string should be "AIC2/1919uc1b354363457"
but is instead "IC2/1919uc1b354363457"

notice the leading "A" missing.

I've noticed this happens when the letter immediately following the slash is the same letter as the one immediately before the slash. Never contributed to python so I'm not exactly sure how to, but if anyone knowledgeable could take a look, this will probably be an easy fix.

Note: I am experiencing this on Python 3.6.4, specifically the Anaconda distribution. I have not tried another version.

lstrip(chars=None, /) method of builtins.str instance
    Return a copy of the string with leading whitespace removed.
    
    If chars is given and not None, remove characters in chars instead.


all L D A / single chars get removed, while there is *any* of them of the left.
not the "LDA/" block as you probably expected

the argument to string.strip (also lstrip and rstrip) is not an exact substring to remove, but a set of characters to remove:

py> 'zyxzz1234'.strip('xyz')
'1234'

Thanks guys. I should have used .replace(). My bad.

nosy: + steven.daprano
messages: + msg315773

resolution: not a bug
stage: resolved