Number list outputed as characters - Elixir

I was working on elixir and suddenly this happened

iex(1)> [9,9,9]
'\t\t\t'
iex(2)> [8,8,8]
'\b\b\b'
iex(3)> [104, 101, 108, 108, 111]
'hello'

List of numbers output as characters. I freaked out, but then checked out the documentation to see that this was normal behavior Can anyone tell me the reason,purpose and any other gotcha's about this if any, Thanks.

via Chebli Mohamed