The SHORTEST way to remove multiple spaces in a string in Python

Question

Suppose this is the string:

The   fox jumped   over    the log.

It would result in:

The fox jumped over the log.

What is the simplest, 1-2 liner that can do this? Without splitting and going into lists...

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

import re
s = "The   fox jumped   over    the log."
re.sub("\s\s+" , " ", s)

Answer 3

foo is your string:

" ".join(foo.split())

Answer 4

Similar to the previous solutions, but more specific: replace two or more spaces with one:

>>> import re
>>> s = "The   fox jumped   over    the log."
>>> re.sub('\s{2,}', ' ', s)
'The fox jumped over the log.'

Answer 5

Have to agree with Paul McGuire's comment above. To me,

         ' '.join(the_string.split())

is vastly preferable to whipping out a regex. My measurements (Linux, Python 2.5) show the split-then-join to be almost 5 times faster than doing the "re.sub(...)", and still 3 times faster if you precompile the regex once and do the operation multiple times. And it is by any measure easier to understand -- much more pythonic.