Normalize whitespace with Python

Question

I\'m building a data extract using scrapy and want to normalize a raw string pulled out of an HTML document. Here\'s an example string:

  Sapphire RX460 OC           


        

Answer 1

Instead of using regex's for this, a more efficient solution is to use the join/split option, observe:

>>> timeit.Timer((lambda:' '.join(' Sapphire RX460 OC  2/4GB'.split()))).timeit()
0.7263979911804199

>>> def f():
        return re.sub(" +", ' ', "  Sapphire RX460 OC  2/4GB").split()

>>> timeit.Timer(f).timeit()
4.163465976715088