string substitutions

[Sheila King]

[posted and mailed]

On 23 Feb 2002 11:52:10 -0800, bobnotbob at byu.edu (Bob Roberts) wrote in
comp.lang.python in article
<c4e6b17d.0202231152.5f87765d at posting.google.com>:

> What would be a good way to replace every one or more spaces (" ") in
> a string with just one space?  Or replace any number of newlines with
> just one?

This function, which I'm currently using in an email filter, replaces
all '\n' characters with a space, and then replaces all occurrences of
more than one space with a single space.

def remove_new_lines(searchstring):
    """ Returns a string without newlines or double spaces. """
    newline = '\n'

	# Replace newlines with spaces
    newstring = searchstring.replace(newline, ' ')

	# Replace multiple spaces with single spaces 
    while newstring.find('  ') > -1:
        newstring = newstring.replace('  ', ' ') 
    return newstring

You could also do this with regular expressions, but this method only
requires regular string operations.

-- 
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/

"When introducing your puppy to an adult cat,
restrain the puppy, not the cat." -- Gwen Bailey,
_The Perfect Puppy: How to Raise a Well-behaved Dog_