Does anyone know a good regex to remove extra spaces?

Question

Possible duplicate:
Replace multiple spaces with a single space in Python

trying to figure out how to write a regular expression that is given for a string:

"hi     this       is a  test"

I can turn it into

"hi this is a test"

where spaces are normalized to only one space

any ideas? Many thanks

Answer 1

import re    
re.sub("\s+"," ",string)

Answer 2

Do I need to be a regular expression?

I would just use

new_string = " ".join(re.split(s'\s+', old_string.strip()))

Answer 3

Sed

 sed 's/[  ]\{2,\}/ /g'