title: Replacing repeated consecutive characters in Python
body: <p>I need to make a function that replaces repeated, consecutive characters with a single character, for example:</p>
  
  <pre><code> 'hiiii how are you??' -&gt; 'hi how are you?'
   'aahhhhhhhhhh whyyyyyy' -&gt; 'ah why'
   'foo' -&gt; 'fo'
   'oook. thesse aree enoughh examplles.' -&gt; 'ok. these are enough examples'
  </code></pre>