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Solve the following problem using Python, implementing the functions described below, one line at a time
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Description:
 def escape(self, text):
 """Replace characters with their character references. Replace characters by their named entity references. Non-ASCII characters, if they do not have a named entity reference, are replaced by numerical character references. The return value is guaranteed to be ASCII. """

        return self.__escapable.sub(self.__escape, compat.text_type(text)
                                    ).encode('ascii')