How to do first characters check in python?

Question

Python

How to check the first characters (in this case, 8)? It is necessary that the program determines whether there are these eight characters at the beginning of the variable.
PS I'm null in a for loop

Answer 1

or a line cut

a = 'hello world'
print(a[:8])

hello wo

Answer 2

a = 'hello world'
a.startswith('hello')