How to Check if String Has the same characters in Python [duplicate]

Question

What is the shortest way to check if a given string has the same characters?

For example if you have name = 'aaaaa' or surname = 'bbbb' or underscores = '___' or p = '++++', how do you check to know the characters are the same?

Answer 1

An option is to check whether the set of its characters has length 1:

>>> len(set("aaaa")) == 1
True

Or with all(), this could be faster if the strings are very long and it's rare that they are all the same character (but then the regex is good too):

>>> s = "aaaaa"
>>> s0 = s[0]
>>> all(c == s0 for c in s[1:])
True

Answer 2

You can use regex for this:

import re
p = re.compile(ur'^(.)\1*$')     

re.search(p, "aaaa") # returns a match object
re.search(p, "bbbb") # returns a match object
re.search(p, "aaab") # returns None

Here's an explanation of what this regex pattern means: https://regexper.com/#%5E(.)%5C1*%24

Answer 3

Also possible:

s = "aaaaa"
s.count(s[0]) == len(s)