Remove repeating characters from words

Question

I was wondering what is the best way to convert something like \"haaaaapppppyyy\" to \"haappyy\".

Basically, when parsing slang, people sometimes repeat characters

Answer 1

You should do it without reduce or regexps:

>>> s = 'hhaaaaapppppyyy'
>>> ''.join(['' if i>1 and e==s[i-2] else e for i,e in enumerate(s)])
'haappyy'

The number of repetitions are hardcoded to >1 and -2 above. The general case:

>>> reps = 1
>>> ''.join(['' if i>reps-1 and e==s[i-reps] else e for i,e in enumerate(s)])
'hapy'