Fix python 2 activator when generated from python 3 is invalid (#1805)

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/src/virtualenv/activation/python/__init__.py b/src/virtualenv/activation/python/__init__.py
index d37432e..43e908c 100644
--- a/src/virtualenv/activation/python/__init__.py
+++ b/src/virtualenv/activation/python/__init__.py
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 from __future__ import absolute_import, unicode_literals
 
 import os
+import sys
 from collections import OrderedDict
 
 from virtualenv.util.path import Path
@@ -29,5 +30,6 @@ class PythonActivator(ViaTemplateActivator):
     def _repr_unicode(creator, value):
         py2 = creator.interpreter.version_info.major == 2
         if py2:  # on Python 2 we need to encode this into explicit utf-8, py3 supports unicode literals
-            value = ensure_text(repr(value.encode("utf-8"))[1:-1])
+            start = 2 if sys.version_info[0] == 3 else 1
+            value = ensure_text(repr(value.encode("utf-8"))[start:-1])
         return value