How to replace repeated instances of a character with a single instance of that character in python

Question

I want to replace repeated instances of the \"*\" character within a string with a single instance of \"*\". For example if the string is \"*

Answer 1

This will work for any number of consecutive asterisks, although you may need to replace the tilde with some other string that you know will be unique throughout the string.

    string = "begin*************end"

    string.replace("**", "~*").replace("*~", "").replace("~*", "*").replace("**", "*")

I believe regex approaches would be generally more computationally expensive than this.