Forgot to mention that this doesn't affect Python 2:

>>> a = u'hyv\xe4'
>>> b = u'hyva\u0308'
>>> print(repr(a))
u'hyv\xe4'
>>> print(repr(b))
u'hyva\u0308'


In addition to hoping `repr()` would be enhanced in future Python 3 versions, I'm also looking for a way how to show differences between strings that look the same but are different. Currently the best I've found is this:

>>> print('hyva\u0308'.encode('unicode_escape').decode('ASCII'))
hyva\u0308