Comparison of multi-line strings in Python unit test

When I compare two Unicode strings in a Python unit test, it gives a nice failure message highlighting which lines and characters are different. However, comparing two 8-bit strings just shows the two strings with no highlighting.

How can I get the highlighting for both Unicode and 8-bit strings?

Here is an example unit test that shows both comparisons:

import unittest

class TestAssertEqual(unittest.TestCase):
    def testString(self):
        a = 'xax\nzzz'
        b = 'xbx\nzzz'
        self.assertEqual(a, b)

    def testUnicode(self):
        a = u'xax\nzzz'
        b = u'xbx\nzzz'
        self.assertEqual(a, b)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()

The results of this test show the difference:

FF
======================================================================
FAIL: testString (__main__.TestAssertEqual)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/mnt/data/don/workspace/scratch/scratch.py", line 7, in testString
    self.assertEqual(a, b)
AssertionError: 'xax\nzzz' != 'xbx\nzzz'

======================================================================
FAIL: testUnicode (__main__.TestAssertEqual)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/mnt/data/don/workspace/scratch/scratch.py", line 12, in testUnicode
    self.assertEqual(a, b)
AssertionError: u'xax\nzzz' != u'xbx\nzzz'
- xax
?  ^
+ xbx
?  ^
  zzz

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 2 tests in 0.001s

FAILED (failures=2)