At 23:14 1/09/2008, you wrote:

>Hi group,
>
>I am converting an existing MySQL database application (very old version of
>MySQL) to FB 2.x.
>
>I writing the code to emulate the calls made to the MySQL Classes, I have
>come across a call to mysql_escape_string() which effectively escapes a
>string by pre-pending a \ to certain characters. For example, a string like
>this XA00 is the value will be returned as follows \XA00 is the value. This
>is apparently to make the string safe to pass to MySQL in a query.
>
>Is there something similar for Firebird

No

>, and is it in fact necessary?

No. In real SQL the boot is really on the other foot. It doesn't treat a string as anything but a string unless you "do something" to make it treat it differently.
The only thing that you ever have to escape is the apostrophe (a.k.a. single-quote) character to protect it from being interpreted as a string delimiter.

Fb 2.1 has some function calls to make the engine treat a string (along with some other constant types) as a hex literal...

./heLen