Using python to find objects in array with same starting characters

Question

I'm new to python and would like to know if there is an easy way to search for Strings in array that have the same starting characters.

for example I have a list

ex = [exA, exB, teA, exC]

and want to get result for everything matching the first two characters something like this:
{'ex' : 3, 'te' : 1}

I have tried working with the Counter method from collections but I cant get a result as shown above.

thank you in advanced

Answer 1

If you slice off the first two characters of each element you can use collections.Counter for this

>>> import collections
>>> ex = ['exA', 'exB', 'teA', 'exC']
>>> collections.Counter(i[:2] for i in ex)
Counter({'ex': 3, 'te': 1})