How to remove duplicates only if consecutive in a string? [duplicate]

Answer 1

+1 for groupby. Off the cuff, something like:

from itertools import groupby
def remove_dupes(arg):
    # create generator of distinct characters, ignore grouper objects
    unique = (i[0] for i in groupby(arg))
    return ''.join(unique)

Cooks for me in Python 2.7.2