I was doing a few experiments with escape backslashes in the Python 3.4 shell and noticed something quite strange.

```
>>> string = "\test\test\1\2\3"
>>> string
'\test\test\x01\x02\x03'
>>> string = "5"
>>> string
'5'
>>> string = "5\6\7"
>>> string
'5\x06\x07'

```

As you can see in the above code, I defined a variable string as `"\test\test\1\2\3"`. However, when I entered `string` in the console, instead of printing `"\test\test\1\2\3"`, it printed `"\test\test\x01\x02\x03"`. Why does this occur, and what is it used for?