How to apply backspaces to a string?

I have a string

s = '--two \x08--three'

When I print, I get

--two--three

but can I do something to have

s='--two--three'

with out declaring it explicitly.

I do not need to store or even know about the back spaces. I just want to manipulate the text without the backspace characters there. How can I achieve this?

Edit: Hopefully I can clarify a little. Say I have two strings

test1 = 'a\bb' #b
test2 = 'b' #b

When they are printed, they are equivalent to the user, but test1!=test2. What I am doing is pulling some output from a terminal. This output has backspaces throughout. I want to be able to manipulate the end result, search for words, edit the string without worrying about the backspaces.

Edit 2: I guess what I really want is to set a variable as the result of a print statement

a = print("5\bA") #a='A' #does not work like this

You can apply backspaces to a string using regular expressions:

import re

def apply_backspace(s):
    while True:
        # if you find a character followed by a backspace, remove both
        t = re.sub('.\b', '', s, count=1)
        if len(s) == len(t):
            # now remove any backspaces from beginning of string
            return re.sub('\b+', '', t)
        s = t

Now:

>>> apply_backspace('abc\b\b\b123')
'123'