title: How can we strip punctuation at the start of a string using Python?
body: <p>I want to strip all kinds of punctuation at the start of the string using Python. My <strong>list</strong> contains strings and some of them starting with some kind of punctuation. And how can I strip all type of punctuation from the strings? </p>
  
  <p>For example: If my word is like <code>,,gets</code>, I want to strip <code>,,</code> from the word, and I want <code>gets</code> as the result. Also, I want to strip away <strong>spaces</strong> as well as <strong>numbers</strong> from the <strong>list</strong>. I have tried with the following code but it is not producing the correct result.</p>
  
  <p>If 'a' is a list containing some words:</p>
  
  <pre><code>for i in range (0,len(a)):
        a[i]=a[i].lstrip().rstrip()
        print a[i]
  </code></pre>