Printing UTF-8-encoded byte string

Question

I have a data of a form: v = \"\\xc5\\x84\"

This is a byte representation of an utf-8 encoded character \"ń\".

How can I print >>ń<< using

Answer 1

Edit In my machine the output depends on the shell/python used, as shown below.
As commented by Klaus a major actor here would be the locale setting in your system.

>>> v = "\xc5\x84"

>>> print v   #in pycrust shell python 2.6
Å„
>>>

>>> print (v) #in idle python 3.2
Å
>>> 

the machine has the following settings:

>>> import locale
>>> locale.getlocale()
('es_ES', 'cp1252')

Independently of this setting, you get your character with

>>> print v.decode('utf-8')
ń
>>>