String replacement without regular expressions

[Jan Schütze <JanS@...>]

Hello,

Since Sam Lie's string.replace function [1] isn't part of the default 
lua release, I wanted to ask if there is any way to escape (fast) all 
magic characters in the string one wants to replace? In string.find one 
has something like a "plain"-parameter, but in string.gsub (for example) 
its missing.

Sincerly,
 Jan (DracoBlue)

[1] http://lua-users.org/wiki/StringReplace