Python enforce unicode escape

how do I enforce unicode escape in python?

I have the unicode string u'aä' or u'a\u00e4' and I want it to be represented as a\u00e4. The solution suggested here doesn't work for me:

>>> repr(u'a\u00e4')
"u'a\\xe4'"

From my understanding the following attempt should be the correct so开发者_StackOverflow中文版lution (but isn't):

>>> u'a\u00e4'.encode('unicode-escape')
'a\\xe4'

I tried it with python 2.6 and 2.7 on OS X and with 2.6 on Debian Squeeze.

Thanks for your time.

Unicode characters below 256 are always encoded with \x in their repr()esentation, as it is the least space-consuming.

Nevertheless, they are unicode because of the u' at the start. It is just a matter of representation.

If you want it nevertheless, you could do

print repr(u'a\u00e4').replace('\\x','\\u00')

.