Convert "\x" escaped string into readable string in python

Question

Is there a way to convert a \x escaped string like "\\xe8\\xaa\\x9e\\xe8\\xa8\\x80" into readable form: "語言"?

>>> a = "\\xe8\\xaa\\x9e\\xe8\\xa8\\x80"
>>> print(a)
\xe8\xaa\x9e\xe8\xa8\x80

I am aware that there is a similar question here, but it seems the solution is only for latin characters. How can I convert this form of string into readable CJK characters?

Answer 1

Decode it first using 'unicode-escape', then as 'utf8':

a = "\\xe8\\xaa\\x9e\\xe8\\xa8\\x80"
    
decoded = a.encode('latin1').decode('unicode_escape').encode('latin1').decode('utf8')
print(decoded)

# 語言

Note that since we can only decode bytes objects, we need to transparently encode it in between, using 'latin1'.