title: optimal way to escape character
body: <p>I need to escape these characters: <code>+-&amp;|!(){}[]^"~*?:\</code> by preceding them with a <code>\\</code>. 
  What is the best way to do this. My first thought was using replace, but that would search the string for each item to replace. 
  I'm thinking there must be a way to do it with regular expressions that would get all in one pass.</p>