raw Strings from XML attributes

[Karen Loughran]

Hiya,

I'm reading a string attribute from an XML document.  The string 
contains newline characters and is treated as raw.
I'm trying to match it with a string read from a file which is identical 
.  But because it isn't raw it won't match.

I've seen documentation for converting string 'literals' to raw form 
with r'Sample String'.  But is there a function which will convert my 
raw string read from XML to non-raw/escaped sequence format ?   Or to 
convert a string 'variable' read from a file to raw form ? ie, I'm not 
converting string 'literals' ?

Thanks
Karen