User Friendly Message

Convert a raw input string into a clean, human-friendly message with proper formatting.

strings formatting cleaning

Write a function `format_message(text: str) -> str` that takes a raw input string and returns a polished, user-friendly version by applying the following rules:
1. Strip leading and trailing whitespace.
2. Replace any sequence of multiple spaces (two or more) with a single space.
3. Ensure the string ends with exactly one period. If it already ends with a period, leave it; otherwise append a period.
4. Capitalize the first letter of the string. All other letters remain unchanged.

Your function must return the transformed string. The input may be any string, including empty or whitespace-only strings.

Examples:
- `format_message("  hello   world  ")` returns `"Hello world."`
- `format_message("already good.")` returns `"Already good."`
- `format_message("   ")` returns `"."` (after stripping, the string is empty; then capitalize (no change) and append a period).

Constraints

Input string length is at most 1000 characters. The string may contain any printable ASCII characters.

Example

>>> format_message("  hello   world  ")
'Hello world.'
>>> format_message("already good.")
'Already good.'
>>> format_message("   ")
'.'

8 points ~12 min

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Hints

Think about stripping first, then collapsing multiple spaces.

Check if the last character is a period before appending one.

To capitalize, use `text[0].upper() + text[1:]` after cleaning.

An empty string has no first letter, so handle that case carefully.

Test Results

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