escaping - 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 "helloworld" | escape | someprog

Where the escape command makes "helloworld" 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" "helloworld" | someprog

for example:

printf "%q" "helloworld"
hello\world

This could be used through variables too:

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