startsWith - Check if a string starts with a given prefix

The startsWith function returns true if a given substring appears at the start of a string, and false if it does not.

NOTE: This is different from contains, which will check if a substring appears anywhere within a given string.

Syntax

startsWith(string: string, prefix: string): bool

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description
string	string	true	The full string to test i.e the haystack
prefix	string	true	The prefix to check against the string i.e the needle

Example - Check if a string contains an IBM CRN

IBM Cloud CRNs look something like this: crn:v1:bluemix:public:cloud-object-storage:global:a/59bcbfa6ea2f006b4ed7094c1a08dcdd:1a0ec336-f391-4091-a6fb-5e084a4c56f4:bucket:mybucket

If we wish to check if a given string is an IBM CRN, we can check if it begins with 'crn:'.

create is_crn from startsWith(crn, 'crn:')

This will define a new boolean field indicating whether a given string is an IBM CRN.

Another way to write this query is to check it directly against the crn field:

create is_crn from crn.startsWith('crn:')

Try it yourself

Open up your log explore screen and run the following command:

create email from '[email protected]'
| create is_chris from email.startsWith('chris')
| choose email, is_chris

splitParts

Next substr