Compare string / wildcards???

Question

I'm looking for a (hopefully) simple way to compare the first portion of 2 string values.

Basically, I will have 2 strings...

str1 = "Code <someNumber>"
str2 = "Type <someValue>"

I don't care what the "someNumber" is and don't care what the <someValue> is... I just need to look at the string being passed and see if it starts with the word code or the word type.

Is there an easy way to do this?

Thanks all!
Bob