title: In Python 2.4, how can I strip out characters after ';'?
body: <p>Let's say I'm parsing a file, which uses <code>;</code> as the comment character. I don't want to parse comments. So if I a line looks like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>example.com.              600     IN      MX      8 s1b9.example.net ; hello!
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there an easier/more-elegant way to strip chars out other than this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>rtr = ''
  for line in file:
      trig = False
      for char in line:
          if not trig and char != ';':
              rtr += char
          else:
              trig = True
      if rtr[max(rtr)] != '\n':
          rtr += '\n'
  </code></pre>