Can you write unescaped search terms in the Vim command line?

Question

When I do a search and replace on a yanked line that has characters that require escaping it's really annoying to have to go back through the command line string and escape all the special characters.

Is there a way to use a literal (raw) string modifer like in python: str = r'\unescaped\'?

Answer 1

Use the \V modifier:

:%s/\V$foo//g

See also :help /magic

Answer 2

I just thought of doing this instead: :%s;\foo\;bar;g. This solves the escape the backslash problem Manni points out.