Simple SQL question

How many times have you seen a subject like that :)

If I want to remove all superfluous spaces from a string, can I do it in one statement?

e.g. if to convert
'the cat sat on the mat'

to
'the cat sat on the mat'

I could code as a loop until the string contains no ' ' (i.e. 2 spaces) but that seems a bit sledgehammer/nut?

i.e.

declare
  l_str varchar2(80) := 'the cat sat on the mat'; begin
  loop
    exit when instr(l_str,' ') = 0;
    l_str := replace(l_str,' ',' ');
  end loop;
  dbms_output.put_line(l_str);
end;
/

That works... but isn't pretty.

-- 
jeremy

We use Oracle 9iR2 on Solaris 8 with the Oracle HTTP Server and 
mod_plsql