String escaping

Thes\x escape denotes a character encoded by the single-byte hex value given by the next two characters. For example, the capital letter 'N' has the value 78, which is 4e in hex. Hence,

>>> '\x4e'
'N'

The backspace "character'' is encoded as hex 08, which is why \b is equivalent to \x08:

>>> 'hello\b\b\b\b\bgoodbye'
'hello\x08\x08\x08\x08\x08goodbye'

Sending this string to the print() function outputs the string formed by the sequence of characters in this string literal:

>>> print('hello\b\b\b\b\bgoodbye')
goodbye