Post

How do you collapse runs of adjacent spaces in Python? That is, shorter runs of 2+ consecutive spaces so there's only 1 space there? I can't come up with a simple/straightforward way to do it with `str.join` and I'm surprised... What am I missing?

2/3/26, 1:24 pm0 reposts1 like

David Mayo 🦜

@dcmayo.bsky.social

2 Mar

This is the only way I can make it work, lol.

Rodrigo Girão Serrão 🐍🚀

@mathspp.com

2 Mar

At least you managed to make it work! For a while, I couldn't do anything at all :P

ax3man1ac

@ax3man1ac.bsky.social

2 Mar

Quite a context free question.... :)

Rodrigo Girão Serrão 🐍🚀

@mathspp.com

2 Mar

It was a random thought, indeed. For a bit more context, see the second approach and how it doesn't work 100%: mathspp.com/blog/remove-...

mathspp.comRemove extra spacesLearn how to remove extra spaces from a string using regex, string splitting, a fixed point, and itertools.groupby.

ax3man1ac

@ax3man1ac.bsky.social

2 Mar

Yup - it's a bit of a gotcha that specifying a separator has different behaviour than the default. For the re I'd be tempted by " {2,}" - bit more explicit, more configurable and on normally spaced strings less replacing to do.

Rodrigo Girão Serrão 🐍🚀

@mathspp.com

2 Mar

Not sure I follow what you mean by “on normally spaced strings less replacing to do”. I like " {2,}" because it's easy to miss the double space in the original " +"... I'll replace it, thanks!