Python 2.7 Replace % (Percentage) to \ (Slash) but got \\ (Double Slash)

Question

I want this result:

u'\ue8fc\x82'

But it always gives me:

u'\\ue8fc\\u0082'

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Sample 1:

>>> a='\ue8fc\u0082'

>>> a
'\\ue8fc\\u0082'

>>> print a
\ue8fc\u0082

>>> unicode(a)
u'\\ue8fc\\u0082'

>>> unicode(a).replace('\\\\','\\')
u'\\ue8fc\\u0082'

>>> repr(unicode(a).replace('\\\\','\\'))
"u'\\\\ue8fc\\\\u0082'"

>>> repr(unicode(b).replace('\\','?'))
"u'?ue8fc?u0082'"

>>> repr(unicode(b).replace('\\','?').replace('?','\\'))
"u'\\\\ue8fc\\\\u0082'"

---

Sample 2:

>>> u'\ue8fc\u0082'
u'\ue8fc\x82'

>>> repr(u'\ue8fc\u0082')
"u'\\ue8fc\\x82'"

---

Why I need this:

I wanna turn

'%ue8fc%u0082'

into

'\ue8fc\u0082'

Answer 1

The backslashes which are used to represent Unicode characters aren't literally part of the string, and cannot be manipulated using str.replace. However, it's possible to convert a string with "real" backslashes into an escaped string using the "unicode_escape" encoding:

>>> s = "%ue8fc%u0082"
>>> s.replace("%", "\\").decode("unicode_escape")
u'\ue8fc\x82'

Answer 2

This is correct. \\ stands for a single backslash. This is the unicode-escaped version of the string.

Use this code to convert to a standard string:

>>> import codecs
>>> codec.decode("\\ue8fc\\u0082", "unicode-escape")
'\ue8fc\x82'