Best way to replace multiple characters in a string?

Question

I need to replace some characters as follows: & ➔ \\&, # ➔ \\#, ...

I coded as follows, but I guess there

Answer 1

Simply chain the replace functions like this

strs = "abc&def#ghi"
print strs.replace('&', '\&').replace('#', '\#')
# abc\&def\#ghi

If the replacements are going to be more in number, you can do this in this generic way

strs, replacements = "abc&def#ghi", {"&": "\&", "#": "\#"}
print "".join([replacements.get(c, c) for c in strs])
# abc\&def\#ghi