Is there a simple way to remove multiple spaces in a string?

Question

Suppose this string:

The   fox jumped   over    the log.

Turning into:

Answer 1

I have tried the following method and it even works with the extreme case like:

str1='          I   live    on    earth           '

' '.join(str1.split())

But if you prefer a regular expression it can be done as:

re.sub('\s+', ' ', str1)

Although some preprocessing has to be done in order to remove the trailing and ending space.

Answer 2

sentence = "The   fox jumped   over    the log."
word = sentence.split()
result = ""
for string in word:
   result += string+" "
print(result)

Answer 3

Solution for Python developers:

import re

text1 = 'Python      Exercises    Are   Challenging Exercises'
print("Original string: ", text1)
print("Without extra spaces: ", re.sub(' +', ' ', text1))

Output:
Original string: Python Exercises Are Challenging Exercises Without extra spaces: Python Exercises Are Challenging Exercises

Answer 4

Quite surprising - no one posted simple function which will be much faster than ALL other posted solutions. Here it goes:

def compactSpaces(s):
    os = ""
    for c in s:
        if c != " " or (os and os[-1] != " "):
            os += c 
    return os

Answer 5

Another alternative:

>>> import re
>>> str = 'this is a            string with    multiple spaces and    tabs'
>>> str = re.sub('[ \t]+' , ' ', str)
>>> print str
this is a string with multiple spaces and tabs

Answer 6

" ".join(foo.split()) is not quite correct with respect to the question asked because it also entirely removes single leading and/or trailing white spaces. So, if they shall also be replaced by 1 blank, you should do something like the following:

" ".join(('*' + foo + '*').split()) [1:-1]

Of course, it's less elegant.