Python: startswith any alpha character

Question

How can I use the startswith function to match any alpha character [a-zA-Z]. For example I would like to do this:

if line.startswith(ALPHA):
    Do Something

Answer 1

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

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

Answer 2

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.