Sanitize Text Strings with Regex in Python

Question

Given a noisy customer search string like '  iPhone  15, Pro Max!! (256GB) ', write a Python regex function to remove all non-alphanumeric characters (except spaces) and collapse multiple whitespace into a single space.

Accepted Answer

Optimal Solution:
import re

def sanitize_text(text: str) -> str:
    # Remove non-alphanumeric characters except spaces
    cleaned = re.sub(r'[^a-zA-Z0-9\s]', '', text)
    # Collapse multiple consecutive whitespaces into one
    return re.sub(r'\s+', ' ', cleaned).strip()

Technical Explanation:
`[^a-zA-Z0-9\s]` matches everything other than letters, numbers, and whitespace. `\s+` replaces consecutive spaces with a single space.