diff --git a/path.py b/path.py
index <HASH>..<HASH> 100644
--- a/path.py
+++ b/path.py
@@ -82,10 +82,10 @@ except AttributeError:
 PY3 = sys.version_info[0] >= 3
 if PY3:
     def u(x):
-        return codecs.unicode_escape_decode(x)[0]
+        return x
 else:
     def u(x):
-        return x
+        return codecs.unicode_escape_decode(x)[0]
 
 o777 = 511
 o766 = 502
Present the modern, Python 3 version first