Remove unwanted spaces between quotations

Question

Is there a more elegant way to remove spaces between quotations (despite using code like this:

input = input.replace('" 12 "', '"12"')`)

from a sentence like this:

 At " 12 " hours " 35 " minutes my friend called me.

Thing is that numbers can change, and then the code won't work correctly. :)

Answer 1

You can use regular expressions as long as your quotations are reasonably sane:

re.sub(r'"\s*([^"]*?)\s*"', r'"\1"', input)

The pattern reads as "quote, any number of spaces, stuff that's not a quote (captured), followed by any number of spaces and a quote. The replacement is just the thing you captured in quotes.

Notice that the quantifier in the capture group is reluctant. That ensures that you don't capture the trailing spaces.