def remove_consecutive_dups(lst):
    """ return a copy of lst with consecutive duplicates of elements eliminated. For example, for lst = [a, a, a, a, b, c, c, a, a, d, e, e, e, e], the returned list is [a, b, c, a, d, e]. """
    return [v for i, v in enumerate(lst) if i == 0 or v != lst[i-1]]