From: Mark  Watson <mark.watson@...>
Date: 2009-01-10T03:24:37+09:00
Subject: Q: most efficient way to remove duplicate spaces in a string?

I don't usually worry too much about efficiency unless runtime
performance becomes an issue so I use a_string.split.join(' ') to
remove extra spaces because the code is short and readable.

This is certainly inefficient. What is the fastest idiom for this
operation?

Thanks,
Mark