Command to escape a string in bash

Question

I need a bash command that will convert a string to something that is escaped. Here's an example:

echo "hello\world" | escape | someprog 

Where the escape command makes "hello\world" into "hello\\\world". Then, someprog can use "hello\\world" as it expects. Of course, this is a simplified example of what I will really be doing.

Answer 1

In Bash:

printf "%q" "hello\world" | someprog 

for example:

printf "%q" "hello\world" hello\\world 

This could be used through variables too:

printf -v var "%q\n" "hello\world" echo "$var" hello\\world