Python Checking a string’s first and last character

When you say [:-1] you are stripping the last element. Instead of slicing the string, you can apply startswith and endswith on the string object itself like this

if str1.startswith('"') and str1.endswith('"'):

So the whole program becomes like this

>>> str1 = '"xxx"'
>>> if str1.startswith('"') and str1.endswith('"'):
...     print "hi"
>>> else:
...     print "condition fails"
...
hi

Even simpler, with a conditional expression, like this

>>> print("hi" if str1.startswith('"') and str1.endswith('"') else "fails")
hi