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

>>> string="abc&def#ghi"
>>> for ch in ['&','#']:
...   if ch in string:
...      string=string.replace(ch,"\\"+ch)
...
>>> print string
abc\&def\#ghi