String Processing: Remove Spaces & Condense Characters
You have a string consisting of various characters, including letters and dots, separated by spaces. The goal is to process this string to:
- Remove all spaces
- Condense consecutive duplicate characters into a single instance
- Output the condensed characters as a continuous string
Solution Overview
1. Remove Spaces
Start by creating a list of characters from the string while ignoring any spaces. This step effectively filters out all the spaces, leaving only the non-space characters.
2. Condense Duplicates
Traverse the filtered list and remove consecutive duplicate characters. Only the first occurrence of each sequence is retained.
3. Output the Result
After condensing, output the characters as a continuous string without separators.
Step-by-Step Breakdown
Step 1: Filter Out Spaces
From the original string, extract all characters that are not spaces. This gives a list containing only relevant characters.
Step 2: Remove Consecutive Duplicates
Create a new list starting with the first character. Compare each character with the previous one and keep it only if it differs.
Step 3: Print the Result
Iterate through the condensed list and print each character consecutively.
Example CLI Output
Input:
a a a . . . b b c c . .
Processing:
- Remove spaces
- Condense duplicates
Output:
a.bc.
Python Implementation
s = "a a a . . . b b c c . ."
filtered = [c for c in s if c != " "]
result = [filtered[0]]
for c in filtered[1:]:
if c != result[-1]:
result.append(c)
print("".join(result))
💡 Key Takeaways
- Simplify input before processing
- Adjacent comparison removes redundancy efficiently
- Linear-time solutions scale well
- Technique applies to logs, streams, and compression
