diff --git a/hgext/extdiff.py b/hgext/extdiff.py
--- a/hgext/extdiff.py
+++ b/hgext/extdiff.py
@@ -342,7 +342,7 @@ class savedcmd(object):
     def __init__(self, path, cmdline):
         # We can't pass non-ASCII through docstrings (and path is
         # in an unknown encoding anyway)
-        docpath = path.encode("string-escape")
+        docpath = util.escapestr(path)
         self.__doc__ = self.__doc__ % {'path': util.uirepr(docpath)}
         self._cmdline = cmdline
 
diff --git a/mercurial/cmdutil.py b/mercurial/cmdutil.py
--- a/mercurial/cmdutil.py
+++ b/mercurial/cmdutil.py
@@ -1300,7 +1300,7 @@ class changeset_printer(object):
             for key, value in sorted(extra.items()):
                 # i18n: column positioning for "hg log"
                 self.ui.write(_("extra:       %s=%s\n")
-                              % (key, value.encode('string_escape')),
+                              % (key, util.escapestr(value)),
                               label='ui.debug log.extra')
 
         description = ctx.description().strip()
diff --git a/mercurial/debugcommands.py b/mercurial/debugcommands.py
--- a/mercurial/debugcommands.py
+++ b/mercurial/debugcommands.py
@@ -1514,8 +1514,8 @@ def debugpushkey(ui, repopath, namespace
         return not r
     else:
         for k, v in sorted(target.listkeys(namespace).iteritems()):
-            ui.write("%s\t%s\n" % (k.encode('string-escape'),
-                                   v.encode('string-escape')))
+            ui.write("%s\t%s\n" % (util.escapestr(k),
+                                   util.escapestr(v)))
 
 @command('debugpvec', [], _('A B'))
 def debugpvec(ui, repo, a, b=None):
diff --git a/mercurial/subrepo.py b/mercurial/subrepo.py
--- a/mercurial/subrepo.py
+++ b/mercurial/subrepo.py
@@ -130,7 +130,7 @@ def state(ctx, ui):
         for pattern, repl in p.items('subpaths'):
             # Turn r'C:\foo\bar' into r'C:\\foo\\bar' since re.sub
             # does a string decode.
-            repl = repl.encode('string-escape')
+            repl = util.escapestr(repl)
             # However, we still want to allow back references to go
             # through unharmed, so we turn r'\\1' into r'\1'. Again,
             # extra escapes are needed because re.sub string decodes.
diff --git a/mercurial/templatefilters.py b/mercurial/templatefilters.py
--- a/mercurial/templatefilters.py
+++ b/mercurial/templatefilters.py
@@ -345,7 +345,7 @@ def splitlines(text):
 
 @templatefilter('stringescape')
 def stringescape(text):
-    return text.encode('string_escape')
+    return util.escapestr(text)
 
 @templatefilter('stringify')
 def stringify(thing):
diff --git a/mercurial/util.py b/mercurial/util.py
--- a/mercurial/util.py
+++ b/mercurial/util.py
@@ -2130,6 +2130,9 @@ bytecount = unitcountfn(
     (1, 1, _('%.0f bytes')),
     )
 
+def escapestr(s):
+    return s.encode('string_escape')
+
 def uirepr(s):
     # Avoid double backslash in Windows path repr()
     return repr(s).replace('\\\\', '\\')
diff --git a/mercurial/wireproto.py b/mercurial/wireproto.py
--- a/mercurial/wireproto.py
+++ b/mercurial/wireproto.py
@@ -900,7 +900,7 @@ def known(repo, proto, nodes, others):
 def pushkey(repo, proto, namespace, key, old, new):
     # compatibility with pre-1.8 clients which were accidentally
     # sending raw binary nodes rather than utf-8-encoded hex
-    if len(new) == 20 and new.encode('string-escape') != new:
+    if len(new) == 20 and util.escapestr(new) != new:
         # looks like it could be a binary node
         try:
             new.decode('utf-8')