bash: how to check if first character of string is "/"?

[Andy Green]

Somebody in the thread at some point said:
>   it's late so i'm sure i'm just being dense in not knowing this, but
> is there a simpler way to check if the first character of a string is
> a "/" rather than the cumbersome:
> 
>   if [ "x${VAR##/*}" = "x" ] ; then ...
> 
> surely there must be *something* that doesn't look quite so grotesque.

How about

if [ "${VAR:0:1}" = "/" ] ; then

-Andy