Thanks for the link.

I actually fixed the problem with the forward slash. Now its just a matter of fixing the problem with the ampersand being treated as a sed special char.

Here is the code so far

function sed_escape {
new=`echo "$1" | sed 's/\//\\\\\//g'`
echo $new
}
VAR1="unimportant"
VAR2=$(printf "%q" "$1") // does most of the work for me
VAR2=`sed_escape "$VAR2" // takes care of forwardslash character and hopefully with your helpall sed specials like &

sed "s/${VAR1}/${VAR2}/g" // my actual sed command

So just the ampersand is causing me troubles now, im sure other sed specials like ^ will be a problem once the ampersand is fixed.