Problem with autoconversion to character

I know about why it shows up in a debugger that way - its the actual code that fails to compile because of it.

Here is what I am doing in my code - essentially building a string:

  def page_pr_map([head | tail], accumulator) do
    [date|val] = head

    dat = Tuple.to_list(date)
    [year, month, day] = dat

    page_pr_map(tail, "[Date.UTC("<>
                           Integer.to_string(year) <> ", " <> Integer.to_string(month) <> "," <> Integer.to_string(day)
                            <>"), "
                            <> val
                            <> "], "
                            <> accumulator)
  end

It’s the val variable that is being received by my code as \f.