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've got a simple method without splitting:

a = "Lorem   Ipsum Darum     Diesrum!"
while True:
    count = a.find("  ")
    if count > 0:
        a = a.replace("  ", " ")
        count = a.find("  ")
        continue
    else:
        break

print(a)

Answer 2

>>> import re
>>> re.sub(' +', ' ', 'The     quick brown    fox')
'The quick brown fox'

Answer 3

One line of code to remove all extra spaces before, after, and within a sentence:

sentence = "  The   fox jumped   over    the log.  "
sentence = ' '.join(filter(None,sentence.split(' ')))

Explanation:

1. Split the entire string into a list.
2. Filter empty elements from the list.
3. Rejoin the remaining elements* with a single space

*The remaining elements should be words or words with punctuations, etc. I did not test this extensively, but this should be a good starting point. All the best!

Answer 4

foo is your string:

" ".join(foo.split())

Be warned though this removes "all whitespace characters (space, tab, newline, return, formfeed)" (thanks to hhsaffar, see comments). I.e., "this is \t a test\n" will effectively end up as "this is a test".

Answer 5

This also seems to work:

while "  " in s:
    s = s.replace("  ", " ")

Where the variable s represents your string.

Answer 6

If it's whitespace you're dealing with, splitting on None will not include an empty string in the returned value.

5.6.1. String Methods, str.split()