title: Remove the first word in a string when this word equals to "the"
body: <p>I have a string "the city of Seattle" or "the city of New York". I hope to remove the word "the" and convert it to "city of Seattle". If the string is "a city of Seattle", it should keep the same.</p>
  
  <p>I tried to use python regex to solve the problem, but it failed. I believe my regex is incorrect.</p>
  
  <pre><code>s = "the city of seattle"
  s = s.replace(/^the /, '');
  print s
  
  s1 = "a city of seattle"
  s1 = s1.replace(/^the /, '');
  print s1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The expected result is: "city of seattle" and "a city of seattle", but I got the syntax error.</p>