title: python: converting from unknown char encoding (assume iso-8859-1) to unicode
body: <p>I'm decoding an xml file with xml.etree and one of the elements contains this string: </p>
  
  <pre><code>ExÃ©cutive
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I tried pretty much everything to figure out how to tranform it to its real value:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Exécutive
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I tried the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; s = 'Ã©'
  
  &gt;&gt;&gt; s
  '\xc3\x83\xc2\xa9'
  
  &gt;&gt;&gt; print s
  Ã©
  
  &gt;&gt;&gt; type(s)
  &lt;type 'str'&gt;
  
  &gt;&gt;&gt; s.decode('iso-8859-1')
  u'\xc3\x83\xc2\xa9'
  
  &gt;&gt;&gt; print( s.decode('iso-8859-1').encode('utf-8'))
  ÃÂ©
  
  &gt;&gt;&gt; print( s.decode('utf-8'))
  Ã©
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm kind of lost here with these encodings. Anyone for a little help? </p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance</p>