OT: scripting help - can you check a string for starts with?

[James Pifer]

Thanks to all that replied. My final solution is if/then/else's. Not as
efficient as a case but does the job, and I can look for the substrings
that I need using:

if echo "$SYSTEMNAME" | grep -q "HP Compaq dc7700"
then
	blah blah blah

Thanks,
James