Converstion

[Chris]

In a program I'm writing I have a problem where a bit of text sent over
a network arrives at my server. If the person who sent the text made a
mistake typing the word and pressed backspace the backspace code is
included in the word for example hello is hel\x08lo. The \x08 is the
backspace key. How do I convert this string to a normal string (without
the \x08). If I print it to screen it appears normal, "hello" but if I
store it in a list it appears as hel\x08lo.