BASH cannot grep properly variable containing '\'

Question

I have got a variable containing \ and cannot grep properly.

I am making a snippet to connect to wifi spots.

I scan all wifi spots and keep that info in /tmp/wifi.spots
then copy the spot I am interested in (with mouse right click)
then paste the spot name into an input command:
make some other things:

a. grep /tmp/wifi.spots to select the ap with the best Quality (=70/70 if possible)

b. grep /tmp/wifi.spots to configure wpa_conf if there is a password

Here is my code:

iwlist <wifi device> scan > /tmp/wifi.spots    

grep /tmp/wifi.spots | grep -i essid 


read -rp "what essid you want to connect to?" ESSID

Here comes the problem: Let's say I want to connect to a spot called "G\xC3\x92TIC". In order to grep correctly in /tmp/wifi.spots,I need to rewrite the ESSID variable to: G\\xC3\\x92TIC

So what I need is the following. After having pasted my essid in ESSID, I need to check it out for any '\' and rewrite the variable if necessary before going through step 4.

Using `grep '\\'`, can you not avoid rewriting your variable ? — xiawi, Feb 07 '19 at 15:58
I think the grep -F solves your problem more elegant. [Grep for literal strings](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3242873/grep-for-literal-strings) — eraenderer, Feb 07 '19 at 16:29
Possible duplicate of [Grep for literal strings](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3242873/grep-for-literal-strings) — Wiktor Stribiżew, Feb 11 '19 at 12:16

BASH cannot grep properly variable containing '\'

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