Re: Deleting intermediate whitespaces, but leaving one behind each word

[Laurent_R]

Hi Feneden,

the solutions using a simple regex suggested by Athanasius and haukex are great and definitely better than any solution using split and join (and I would have suggested exactly the same solution as haukex if he had not done it before).

However, I feel it might be useful for you to see how your original solution could be improved:

use strict;
use warnings;
my @CPU_SPLIT = split /\s+/, $CPU;     # split the string on one or mo
+re spaces
# ~ s\ //g;                            # this line does not make any s
+ense to me, commented out.
my $result = join ' ', @CPU_SPLIT;     # join can operate directly on 
+an array, no need to list the indices

[Eily]

definitely better than any solution using split and join

Well, the best solutions are the ones you understand the most. I doubt there's a performance issue here anyway. So ++ for giving a solution based on the original one.

NB: split /\s+/, $CPU can be written split " ", $CPU since the latter will be translated to the former, as explained in the doc. Then if you don't need the temp variable:
my $result = join " ", split " ", $CPU;
(Okay, maybe in that case using /\s+/ makes it look a little less silly :P)

[Laurent_R]

Well, the best solutions are the ones you understand the most. I doubt there's a performance issue here anyway.

Yes, Eily++, I agree with both sentences. I meant "better" only in the sense that I find that the solutions using the s/// substitution operator are just simpler.

And, yes, I would also avoid the intermediate temp variable by pipe-lining the join and the split as you've shown, but, here, I wanted to stay close to the OP's solution.

As for the more awkish version of split using the ' ' string for splitting on multiple spaces, I know it exists and I agree it looks somewhat simpler, but I tend to prefer a regex such as /\s+/ because I find it states more explicitly what it is doing; as an example, I wouldn't know for sure (off the top of my head, without looking up in the documentation or testing, that is) whether it would also split on tabs or new line characters.