Replace consecutive characters with same single character

Question

I was just wondering if there is a simple way of doing this. i.e. Replacing the occurrence of consecutive characters with the same character.

For eg: - if my string is "something likeeeee tttthhiiissss" then my final output should be "something like this".

The string can contain special characters too including space.

Can you guys suggest some simple way for doing this.

Answer 1

This should do it:

var regex = new Regex("(.)\\1+");
var str = "something likeeeee!! tttthhiiissss";

Console.WriteLine(regex.Replace(str, "$1")); // something like! this

The regex will match any character (.) and \\1+ will match whatever was captured in the first group.