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

Maybe a simple loop for chars to replace:

a = '&#'

to_replace = ['&', '#']

for char in to_replace:
    a = a.replace(char, "\\"+char)

print(a)

>>> \&\#