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  • \$\begingroup\$ Surely given x="a" and y="ab" you would exit the loop with y=="b" and return false? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Apr 15, 2012 at 22:29
  • \$\begingroup\$ @PeterTaylor Yeah, I noticed when I was running the examples as tests after posting that I've mixed x and y up. In my functions y needs to be a subsequence of x. I think I'd better change them to avoid any confusion. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Apr 15, 2012 at 22:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ You can get this down to 59 chars: def s(x,y): for c in y: if x:x=x[c==x[0]:] return x=="". It doesn't display correctly in a comment, but I think you can see what I mean. (Also, one added space is enough to increase the indent level.) \$\endgroup\$ Commented Apr 15, 2012 at 23:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ @r.e.s. Thanks, Python's not a language I use much as you can probably tell. Nice golfing. (63 characters according to the Codegolf userscript - it must be counting the newlines). \$\endgroup\$ Commented Apr 15, 2012 at 23:26
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ You can use extending slicing to protect against x being '' and save several chars by writing x=x[c==x[0:1]:] \$\endgroup\$ Commented Sep 10, 2012 at 7:57