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Format a String Your solution will be scored against multiple hidden test cases, with a sample case provided for your reference. The default code includes a mechanism for reading input strings. You will need to parse these strings into the appropriate variables as needed. The output data type is not a concern, as long as the characters within the output match the expected outcome. Task: Given a string such as "THIS_IS_A_TEST" containing underscores and uppercase characters, write a program to format it into a more human-friendly, readable format. Convert the underscores to spaces. Change the first letter of each word to uppercase. Input: The input consists of a string that may contain letters, underscores, and spaces. Output: Print the formatted string after converting underscores to spaces and capitalizing the first letter of each word. Sample Input: THIS_IS A_TEST Sample Output: This Is A Test

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Solution


# Use urllib.request to send network request if needed.

import fileinput

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Explanation


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To solve the problem of formatting a given string into a human-friendly and readable form, you should carefully analyze the requirements and think about the steps needed to transform the input string.

The input string may contain uppercase letters, underscores, and spaces. Your goal is to produce an output string where underscores are replaced by spaces, and the first letter of each word is capitalized while the rest of the letters in each word are in lowercase. Essentially, you want to convert the string into "title case" with spaces separating words, regardless of whether the input had underscores or spaces.

Start by focusing on the primary transformations:

1. **Replacing underscores with spaces:** Since underscores act as word separators, you must first unify the separators by converting all underscores into spaces. This simplifies the string, making it easier to split into words using spaces as delimiters.

2. **Splitting the string into words:** Once the string contains only spaces as separators, you can split it based on spaces to extract individual words. Be mindful of multiple consecutive spaces or trailing spaces, which might result in empty strings or extra empty elements when splitting. Filter or ignore these empty strings during further processing.

3. **Capitalizing each word appropriately:** For each extracted word, change the first letter to uppercase and the remaining letters to lowercase. This step ensures the output is in a consistent human-readable format, regardless of the input casing. For example, "THIS" or "tHIS" would both become "This."

4. **Reconstructing the formatted string:** After processing each word, join them back together using a single space to form the final output string.

Consider these additional points to guide your implementation:

- **Input normalization:** Since the input may contain mixed spaces and underscores, and possibly leading or trailing spaces, normalize the string early by replacing all underscores with spaces and trimming excess whitespace to avoid irregular formatting.

- **Handling multiple spaces:** When splitting by spaces, the presence of multiple spaces between words can create empty elements. Use logic to skip or remove empty strings to ensure only valid words are processed.

- **Consistent casing:** The capitalization step should be done carefully. Capitalize only the first character of each word and convert all other characters to lowercase. This is essential because input words may be all uppercase, mixed case, or even all lowercase.

- **Output formatting:** After processing all words, join them with single spaces. Avoid trailing or leading spaces in the final output to maintain a clean format.

- **Edge cases:** Consider edge cases such as:
- An empty string input (should output an empty string).
- Strings with only underscores or only spaces.
- Strings with mixed underscores and spaces in varying orders.
- Strings with one letter or one word only.

This problem is straightforward but requires attention to string manipulation details and clean processing steps. Conceptually, think of it as a pipeline:

Input string β†’ Replace underscores with spaces β†’ Split by spaces β†’ Capitalize words β†’ Join with spaces β†’ Output formatted string

By structuring your approach this way, you can handle any input string that fits the problem constraints, producing consistent, readable output.

Additionally, consider the efficiency and simplicity of your approach. String operations like replace, split, join, and capitalization are common and efficient in most programming languages. Make sure to utilize built-in functions appropriately to simplify the solution and reduce chances of errors.

In summary, to solve the formatting problem:
- Normalize the input by converting underscores to spaces.
- Split the string into words using spaces as delimiters.
- Capitalize the first letter of each word and lowercase the rest.
- Join the words back with spaces to form the final output.
- Handle edge cases gracefully and ensure no extra spaces in output.

This clear, step-by-step approach will reliably convert the input into a human-friendly, readable format as required.
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