title: Python 2.7: Back to utf-8 after using decode unicode-escape
body: <p>I am trying to remove chars, but have different inputs (can be <code>u'ä'</code> or <code>\\u0001</code> and so on) so I used encode(<code>utf-8</code>).decode(<code>unicode-escape</code>) to bring it to the same format and clean:</p>
  
  <pre><code>s = "\\u0001" 
  s.encode("utf-8")
  '\\u0001'
  s.encode("utf-8").decode("unicode-escape")
  u'\x01'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>or</p>
  
  <pre><code>s = u'ä'
  s.encode("utf-8")
  '\xc3\xa4'
  s.encode("utf-8").decode("unicode-escape")
  u'\xc3\xa4'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The question is how to get back to <code>utf-8</code> after?
  Found <code>.encode("raw_unicode_escape")</code> which passes basic tests, but still not sure.</p>