In bash, given a string assignment as follows, how do I "add slashes"
automagically, so that it can be safely passed to another program? Notice
that the assignment contains spaces, single-quotes and double-quotes, maybe
god-only-knows-what-else. It's untrusted data.

Yet I need to pass it all *safely*.

The appropriate function in PHP is addslashes(); but what is the bash
equivalent? EG:

#! /bin/sh
A="This isn't a \"parameter\"";

B=`/path/to/somecommand.sh $A`;
exit 0;


Thanks,

-Ben