You can use startswith and list comprehension for this purpose as below:
paths=['Brad/files/pdf/abc.pdf','Brad/files/pdf/abc2.pdf','Brad/files/pdf/abc3.pdf','Brad/files/pdf/abc4.pdf','mybucket/files/pdf/new/','mybucket/files/pdf/new/abc.pdf','mybucket/files/pdf/2011/']
def foo(m):
return [p for p in paths if p.startswith(m+'/')]
print foo('Brad')
output:
['Brad/files/pdf/abc.pdf', 'Brad/files/pdf/abc2.pdf', 'Brad/files/pdf/abc3.pdf', 'Brad/files/pdf/abc4.pdf']
Using split and filter:
def foo(m):
return filter(lambda x: x.split('/')[0]== m, paths)