Remove repeating characters from words

Question

I was wondering what is the best way to convert something like \"haaaaapppppyyy\" to \"haappyy\".

Basically, when parsing slang, people sometimes repeat characters

Answer 1

It can be done using regular expressions:

>>> import re
>>> re.sub(r'(.)\1+', r'\1\1', "haaaaapppppyyy")     
'haappyy'

(.)\1+ repleaces any character (.) followed by one or more of the same character (because of the backref \1 it must be the same) by twice the character.