Is there a simple way to remove multiple spaces in a string?

Question

Suppose this string:

The   fox jumped   over    the log.

Turning into:

Answer 1

I have tried the following method and it even works with the extreme case like:

str1='          I   live    on    earth           '

' '.join(str1.split())

But if you prefer a regular expression it can be done as:

re.sub('\s+', ' ', str1)

Although some preprocessing has to be done in order to remove the trailing and ending space.