Question

Suppose I had a string for example:

>>>  stri = "日本"
>>>  res = stri
>>>  res
'\xe6\x97\xa5\xe6\x9c\xac'

Now I want to convert the result in res back to the form in "日本".

Answer 1

(Assuming that you’re using Python 2.x on a UTF-8 console):

Nothing has been converted, and there is no need to convert anything back; what you’re seeing is the internal representation of the string. Try printing it.

>>>  stri = "日本"
>>>  stri
'\xe6\x97\xa5\xe6\x9c\xac'
>>> print(stri)
日本

To clarify:

If you enter the name of a Python variable in the console, the console will print the repr of that variable. If you want to print the variable in human-readable form, use print instead. There is no difference in the way the variable is stored, therefore there’s nothing to convert.