replace '\\x' with '\x'

>>> s = '\\xca'
>>> s
'\\xca'
>>> s.replace('\\x', '\x')
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    s.replace('\\x', '\x')
                         ^
SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 0-1: truncated \xXX escape

how to bypass the error? to print ‘Ê’ character instead of \\xca

PS: s.replace('\\xca', '\xca') is not what I want

>Solution :

This looks like a fragment of a string literal. You could have python parse it, but you would also have to add surrounding quotes so that python views it as a string.

import ast
s = '\\xca'
fixed = ast.literal_eval('"' + s + '"')
print(fixed)

Output

Ê