Replacing repeated consecutive characters in Python

Question

I need to make a function that replaces repeated, consecutive characters with a single character, for example:

 \'hiiii how are you??\' -> \'hi how are you?\'         


        

Answer 1

You can try a regular expression like (.)\1+, i.e. "something, then more of the same something", and replace it with \1, i.e. "that first something".

>>> import re
>>> re.sub(r"(.)\1+", r"\1", 'aahhhhhhhhhh whyyyyyy')
'ah why'
>>> re.sub(r"(.)\1+", r"\1", 'oook. thesse aree enoughh examplles.')
'ok. these are enough examples.'

Make it a function with functools.partial (or any other way you like)

>>> import functools
>>> dedup = functools.partial(re.sub, r"(.)\1+", r"\1")
>>> dedup('oook. thesse aree enoughh examplles.')
'ok. these are enough examples.'