Stripping off extra spaces from a string

Question

You are given a string. Output the string with one space per words.

Challenge

Input will be a string (not null or empty), surrounded with quotes(") sent via the stdin. Remove leading and trailing spaces from it. Also, if there are more than one space between two words (or symbols or whatever), trim it to just one space. Output the modified string with the quotes.

Rules

• The string will not be longer than 100 characters and will only contain ASCII characters in range (space) to ~(tilde) (character codes 0x20 to 0x7E, inclusive) except ",i.e, the string will not contain quotes(") and other characters outside the range specified above. See ASCII table for reference.
• You must take input from the stdin( or closest alternative ).
• The output must contain quotes(").
• You can write a full program, or a function which takes input (from stdin), and outputs the final string

Test Cases

"this  is  a    string   "         --> "this is a string"

"  blah blah    blah "             --> "blah blah blah"

"abcdefg"                          --> "abcdefg"

"           "                      --> ""

"12 34  ~5 6   (7, 8) - 9 -  "     --> "12 34 ~5 6 (7, 8) - 9 -" 

Scoring

This is code golf, so the shortest submission (in bytes) wins.

Answer 1

CJam, 7 bytes

q~S%S*p

Code Explanation

CJam has reserved all capital letters as inbuilt variables. So S has a value of a space here.

q~          e# Read the input (using q) and evaluate (~) to get the string
  S%        e# Split on running lengths (%) of space
    S*      e# Join (*) the splitted parts by single space
      p     e# Print the stringified form (p) of the string.

This removes the trailing and leading spaces as well

Try it online here

Answer 2

///: 18 characters

/  / //" /"// "/"/

Sample run:

(Using faubiguy's interpreter from his Perl answer for Interpret /// (pronounced 'slashes').)

bash-4.3$ ( echo -n '/  / //" /"// "/"/'; echo '"   foo  *  bar   "'; ) | slashes.pl
"foo * bar"

Answer 3

Perl, 22

(20 bytes of code, plus 2 command line switches)

s/ +/ /g;s/" | "/"/g

Needs to be run with the -np switch so that $_ is automatically filled via stdin and printed to stdout. I'm going to assume this adds 2 to the byte count.

Answer 4

Bash, 36 32 bytes

As a function, a program, or just in a pipe:

xargs|xargs|xargs -i echo '"{}"'

Explanation

The first xargs strips the quotation marks.

The second xargs trims the left side and replaces multiple adjacent spaces in the middle of the string with one space by taking each "word" and separating each with a space.

The xargs -i echo '"{}"' trims the right side and rewraps the resulting string in double quotes.

Answer 5

Ruby, 31 29 25 23 Bytes

p$*[0].strip.squeeze' '

Code Explanation:

• p outputs string within double quotes to STDOUT (There's more to it though...)
• $* is an array of STDIN inputs, $*[0] takes the first one
• strip removes starting and ending spaces
• squeeze ' ' replaces >1 space characters with a single space

Test Cases:

Answer 6

Pyth, 17 15 11 10 bytes

(thanks to Ypnypn and FryAmTheEggman)

pjd-cQdkNN

Could probably be golfed more.

If the output can use ' instead of " then I only need 8 bytes:

`jd-cQdk

Answer 7

Haskell, 31 25 bytes

fmap(unwords.words)readLn

words splits the string into a list of strings with spaces as delimiters and unwords joins the list of strings with a single spaces in-between. The quotes " are stripped of and put back by Haskell's read and show (implicitly via the REPL) functions on strings.

Outputting by the function itself is three bytes longer, i.e. 28 bytes:

print.unwords.words=<<readLn

Edit: @Mauris pointed to the readLn function, which saved some bytes.

Answer 8

JavaScript (ES6), 49 52 58

Edit 6 bytes shorter, thanks to @Optimizer

Edit 2 -3, thanks to @nderscore

Input/output via popup. Using template string to cut 1 byte in string concatenation.

Run snippet to test in Firefox.

alert(`"${prompt().match(/[^ "]+/g).join(" ")}"`)

Answer 9

R, 45 bytes

cat('"',gsub(" +"," ",readline()),'"',sep="")

The readline() function reads from STDIN, automatically stripping any leading and trailing whitespace. Excess space between words is removed using gsub(). Finally, double quotes are prepended and appended and the result is printed to STDOUT.

Examples:

> cat('"',gsub(" +"," ",readline()),'"',sep="")
    This   is     a   string  
"This is a string"

> cat('"',gsub(" +"," ",readline()),'"',sep="")
12 34  ~5 6   (7, 8) - 9 -  
"12 34 ~5 6 (7, 8) - 9 -"

Answer 10

Python2, 37

Reduced by 1 byte thanks to @ygramul.

print'"%s"'%' '.join(input().split())

Original version:

print'"'+' '.join(input().split())+'"'

Test cases:

Answer 11

05AB1E, 9 bytes

#õKðý'".ø

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---

#         | Split on spaces.
 õK       | Remove empty Strings.
   ðý     | Join with spaces.
     '".ø | Surround with quotes.

Answer 12

Java 8, 40 bytes

s->'"'+s.replaceAll(" +"," ").trim()+'"'

Explanation:

Try it here.

s->                        // Method with String as parameter and return-type
  '"'                      //  Return a leading quote
  +s.replaceAll(" +",      //  + Replace all occurrences of multiple spaces in the input
                     " ")  //    with a single space
    .trim()                //    and remove all leading and trailing spaces
  +'"'                     //  + a trailing quote

Answer 13

Mathematica, 75 bytes

a=" ";b=a...;Print[InputString[]~StringReplace~{b~~"\""~~b->"\"",a..->a}]

Answer 14

KDB(Q), 28 bytes

" "sv except[;enlist""]" "vs

Explanation

                       " "vs    / cut string by space
      except[;enlist""]         / clear empty strings
" "sv                           / join back with space

Test

q)" "sv except[;enlist""]" "vs"12 34  ~5 6   (7, 8) - 9 -  "
"12 34 ~5 6 (7, 8) - 9 -"

Answer 15

Octave, 44 bytes

@(x)[34 strjoin(regexp(x,'\S+','match')) 34]

Try it online!

Answer 16

Perl 5, 17 bytes

16 bytes of code + 1 for -p

s/ *("| ) */$1/g

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Answer 17

Powershell, 40 bytes

"`"$(($args-Replace' +'," ").trim())`""

Pretty straight forward and not very impressive.

Explanation

Take input parameter via (predfined) args-variable, replace all multiple spaces with one, trim leading and trailing spaces using trim()-method, add quotes. Powershell will print strings to console as default behavior.

Answer 18

Jq 1.5, 42 bytes

split(" ")|map(select(length>0))|join(" ")

Sample Run

$ jq -M 'split(" ")|map(select(length>0))|join(" ")' < data
"this is a string"
"blah blah blah"
"abcdefg"
""
"12 34 ~5 6 (7, 8) - 9 -"

$ echo -n 'split(" ")|map(select(length>0))|join(" ")' | wc -c
  42

Try it online

Answer 19

Tcl, 69 bytes

puts [string map {{ "} \" {" } \"} [regsub -all \ + [gets stdin] \ ]]

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Tcl, 79 bytes

puts \"[string trim [regsub -all \ + [string range [gets stdin] 1 end-1] \ ]]\"

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Answer 20

Japt -Q, 10 4 bytes

¸f ¸

Try it

Answer 21

Zsh, 15 bytes

<<<\"${(Qz)1}\"

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Input string contains embedded quotes. Remove the Q for 14 bytes if the input string does not contain embedded quotes, as is done in some of the other answers here.

Parameter expansion flags: Q dequotes, then z splits into words as the shell does. The words are then implicitly joined by spaces.

Answer 22

GolfScript, 8 bytes

' '%' '*

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Explanation

The logic is quite simple:

' '%     # Split on spaces, remove empty results
    ' '* # Join on spaces

Answer 23

Nim, 72 bytes

import strutils
echo'"',stdin.readAll[1..^2].splitWhitespace.join" ",'"'

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Ignoring the IO restrictions as many answers do, 58 bytes:

import strutils
echo stdin.readAll.splitWhitespace.join" "

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Answer 24

C (gcc), 82 bytes

char*s=&s+9;main(t){for(gets(s);*s;s++)*s>32|(s[1]>32&&s[2]&&t)&&putchar(*s,--t);}

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Answer 25

K (ngn/k), 21 18 16 15 bytes

" "/(~#:')_" "\

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• " "\ split (implicit) input on spaces
• (~#:')_ drop empty strings
• " "/ join remaining items with spaces

Answer 26

Fortran, 113 bytes

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character(99)S;read(*,'(A)')S;S='"'//trim(adjustl(S))//'"'
do i=1,99;if(S(i:i+1)>'  ')call fput(S(i:i));enddo;end

Per wikibooks, "It should be remembered that Fortran is designed for scientific computing and is probably not a good choice for writing a new word processor."

Fortran doesn't have a regex concept either. This just makes string challenges more interesting!

In this solution, we trim the string S, then iterate over it. Print each character unless it's a space followed by another space.

Previously: 127 bytes, 147 bytes

Answer 27

ARBLE, 26 bytes

join(explode(s,"%S+")," ")

explode groups by non-spaces, and then join re-concatenates them.

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Answer 28

Thunno 2, 4 bytes

OðjṘ

Try it online!

Explanation

OðjṘ  # Implicit input
      # Implicit eval to
      # remove the quotes
O     # Split on spaces
 ðj   # Join on spaces
   Ṙ  # Repr (surround
      # by quotes)
      # Implicit output

Answer 29

golfua, 42 bytes

L=I.r():g('%s*\"%s*','"'):g('%s+',' ')w(L)

Simple pattern matching replacement: find any double quotes (\") surrounded by 0 or more spaces (%s*) & return the single quote, then replace all 1 or more spaces (%s+) with a single space.

A Lua equivalent would be

Line = io.read()
NoSpaceQuotes = Line:gsub('%s*\"%s*', '"')
NoExtraSpaces = NoSpaceQuotes:gsub('%s+', ' ')
print(NoExtraSpaces)

Answer 30

Cobra - 68

As an anonymous function:

do
    print'"[(for s in Console.readLine.split where''<s).join(' ')]"'