title: How to convert hex escaped characters to unicode characters?
body: <p>I am revamping an old Emacs / Gnus configuration dating from before unicode Emacs (21.3 or 22). In this configuration, I was using some unicode characters to show usenet threads:</p>
  
  <pre><code>  (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-root "\x490a4 ")     ; "&gt; "
    (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-false-root "\x490a4 ") ; "&gt; "
    (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-indent " ") ; "  "
    (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-single-indent "") ; ""
    (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-leaf-with-other "\x4903c\x49020\x4904c\x490f9 ") ; "+-&gt; "
    (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-vertical "\x49022 ") ; "| "
    (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-single-leaf "\x490b0\x49020\x490f9 "))   ; "\\-&gt; "
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But now with Emacs 23.2.1 I see empty squares instead of curved arrows. I suspect it can be either a fontset or an escaping problem related to unibyte / multibyte. </p>
  
  <p>To exclude the escaping problem or solve it, how can I retrieve the unicode characters to use the <code>\u1234</code> escaping instead of the <code>\x12345</code> ? Thanks.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit:</strong> Thanks to an Emacs-22 I was able to insert those characters in a buffer and find their code with <kbd>C-u</kbd><kbd>C-x</kbd><kbd>=</kbd>. </p>
  
  <p>The correspondance is </p>
  
  <pre><code>(setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-root "\u2564 "
          gnus-sum-thread-tree-false-root "\u2564 "
          gnus-sum-thread-tree-leaf-with-other "\u251c\u2500\u252c\25b9 "
          gnus-sum-thread-tree-vertical "\u2502 "
          gnus-sum-thread-tree-single-leaf "\u2570\u2500\u25b9 "))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>...but the display is not as nice as it was at the time those unicode characters were chosen. It was on another system and I suppose that the font was nicer to display them.</p>