title: Creating a directory using part of a variable name
body: <p>New to python and Im trying to create a set of directories, and create a file in each one, the input name will be a string starting with a > sign but I don't want the directory to contain the >.  </p>
  
  <p>I've tried to do the following; </p>
  
  <pre><code>    seq_id = "&gt;seq"
      dirname = seq_id[1:]
  
      print(dirname)
      if not os.path.isdir('./' + dirname + '/'):
         os.mkdir('./' + dirname + '/')
  
      print("directory made")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It will not make the directory when I used the seq_id[1:] bit but it will print it. So I don't really get why it won't create the directory. </p>
  
  <p>I ultimately want to build a function that would take a list of seq_ids from a file, >seq1 >seq2 >seq3 etc and create a directory for each one. </p>
  
  <p>(Working with python3.5) </p>