Remove leading whitespace and characters from a string.

    Parameters
    ----------
    string : `str`
        String to strip.
    chars : `str`
        Characters to remove.

    Returns
    -------
    `str`
        Stripped string.

    Examples
    --------
    >>> lstrip_ws_and_chars(' \\t.\\n , .x. ', '.,?!')
    'x. '

def lstrip_ws_and_chars(string, chars):
    """Remove leading whitespace and characters from a string.

    Parameters
    ----------
    string : `str`
        String to strip.
    chars : `str`
        Characters to remove.

    Returns
    -------
    `str`
        Stripped string.

    Examples
    --------
    >>> lstrip_ws_and_chars(' \\t.\\n , .x. ', '.,?!')
    'x. '
    """
    res = string.lstrip().lstrip(chars)
    while len(res) != len(string):
        string = res
        res = string.lstrip().lstrip(chars)
    return res