title: Converting double slash utf-8 encoding
body: <p>I cannot get this to work!  I have a text file from a save game file parser with a bunch of UTF-8 Chinese names in it in byte form, like this in the source.txt:</p>
  
  <p>\xe6\x89\x8e\xe5\x8a\xa0\xe6\x8b\x89</p>
  
  <p>But, no matter how I import it into Python (3 or 2), I get this string, at best:</p>
  
  <p>\\xe6\\x89\\x8e\\xe5\\x8a\\xa0\\xe6\\x8b\\x89</p>
  
  <p>I have tried, like other threads have suggested, to re-encode the string as UTF-8 and then decode it with unicode escape, like so:</p>
  
  <pre><code>stringName.encode("utf-8").decode("unicode_escape")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But then it messes up the original encoding, and gives this as the string:</p>
  
  <p>'æ\x89\x8eå\x8a\xa0æ\x8b\x89' (printing this string results in: æå æ )</p>
  
  <p>Now, if I manually copy and paste b + the original string in the filename and encode this, I get the correct encoding.  For example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>b'\xe6\x89\x8e\xe5\x8a\xa0\xe6\x8b\x89'.encode("utf-8")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Results in:  '扎加拉'</p>
  
  <p>But, I can't do this programmatically.  I can't even get rid of the double slashes.  </p>
  
  <p>To be clear, source.txt contains single backslashes.  I have tried importing it in many ways, but this is the most common: </p>
  
  <pre><code>with open('source.txt','r',encoding='utf-8') as f_open:
      source = f_open.read()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Okay, so I clicked the answer below (I think), but here is what works:</p>
  
  <pre><code>from ast import literal_eval
  decodedString = literal_eval("b'{}'".format(stringVariable)).decode('utf-8')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I can't use it on the whole file because of other encoding issues, but extracting each name as a string (stringVariable) and then doing that works!  Thank you!</p>
  
  <p>To be more clear, the original file is not just these messed up utf encodings.  It only uses them for certain fields.  For example, here is the beginning of the file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>{'m_cacheHandles': ['s2ma\x00\x00CN\x1f\x1b"\x8d\xdb\x1fr \\\xbf\xd4D\x05R\x87\x10\x0b\x0f9\x95\x9b\xe8\x16T\x81b\xe4\x08\x1e\xa8U\x11',
                  's2ma\x00\x00CN\x1a\xd9L\x12n\xb9\x8aL\x1d\xe7\xb8\xe6\xf8\xaa\xa1S\xdb\xa5+\t\xd3\x82^\x0c\x89\xdb\xc5\x82\x8d\xb7\x0fv',
                  's2ma\x00\x00CN\x92\xd8\x17D\xc1D\x1b\xf6(\xedj\xb7\xe9\xd1\x94\x85\xc8`\x91M\x8btZ\x91\xf65\x1f\xf9\xdc\xd4\xe6\xbb',
                  's2ma\x00\x00CN\xa1\xe9\xab\xcd?\xd2PS\xc9\x03\xab\x13R\xa6\x85u7(K2\x9d\x08\xb8k+\xe2\xdeI\xc3\xab\x7fC',
                  's2ma\x00\x00CNN\xa5\xe7\xaf\xa0\x84\xe5\xbc\xe9HX\xb93S*sj\xe3\xf8\xe7\x84`\xf1Ye\x15~\xb93\x1f\xc90',
                  's2ma\x00\x00CN8\xc6\x13F\x19\x1f\x97AH\xfa\x81m\xac\xc9\xa6\xa8\x90s\xfdd\x06\rL]z\xbb\x15\xdcI\x93\xd3V'],
  'm_campaignIndex': 0,
  'm_defaultDifficulty': 7,
  'm_description': '',
  'm_difficulty': '',
  'm_gameSpeed': 4,
  'm_imageFilePath': '',
  'm_isBlizzardMap': True,
  'm_mapFileName': '',
  'm_miniSave': False,
  'm_modPaths': None,
  'm_playerList': [{'m_color': {'m_a': 255, 'm_b': 255, 'm_g': 92,   'm_r': 36},
                 'm_control': 2,
                 'm_handicap': 0,
                 'm_hero': '\xe6\x89\x8e\xe5\x8a\xa0\xe6\x8b\x89',
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>All of the information before the 'm_hero': field is not utf-8.  So using ShadowRanger's solution works if the file is only made up of these fake utf-encodings, but it doesn't work when I have already parsed m_hero as a string and try to convert that.  Karin's solution does work for that.</p>