Escaping unicode string using \u

Question

I have a string like "válido" . Usually python can convert this to hex based easily on the command prompt and this would become 'v\\xc3\\x83\\xc2\\xa1lido'

But I want to use \\u\u003c/code> for the unicode codepoints, so I want the output like "v\Â\¡lido"

So basically the input should be "válido" and the output should be "v\Â\¡lido"

Answer 1

\\u\u003c/code> only works in Unicode strings; start your string literal with u :

u"v\u00c2\u00a1lido"

Demo:

>>> u"v\u00c2\u00a1lido"
u'v\xc2\xa1lido'
>>> print u"v\u00c2\u00a1lido"
v¡lido

Answer 2

I think json.dumps is what you need:

>>> s="válido"
>>> s
'v\xc3\x83\xc2\xa1lido'
>>> json.dumps(s)
'"v\\u00c3\\u00a1lido"'
>>> print json.dumps(s)
"v\u00c3\u00a1lido"

Maybe it's too late for the OP, but hope it can help guys who are trying to solve the same problem.