Escaping special characters in LaTeX output [was: Lua/TikZ terminal patch update on patch tracker]

[sfeam (E. Merritt) <eam...@gm...>]

See also 
Feature Request 1848048 	"latex driver could intelligently add escape sequences" 	
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1848048&group_id=2055&atid=352055

On Tuesday, February 22, 2011, Peter Hedwig wrote:
> [I]magine a file where you have a column with e.g. currencies or percent
> symbols that should be added to the plot. Giving a simple way to achieve
> this could be nice, too. Not everyone is into sed and awk.

That much sounds easy on the gnuplot end.  Add a new keyword
  set datafile literal_strings
and then wrap any strings read from that particular file with escape
characters appropriate to the current terminal.

But is there an all-purpose escape mechanism in TeX?
That is, can you mark a string somehow so that every character in
it is printed with no interpretation or processing whatsoever?

	Ethan