How Do You Escape Special Characters In Sphinx Configuration?

Q: My database password contains bang character (!) and when I specify the password in sphinx config I keep getting errors. Why?

SOLUTION
It goes without saying that it must have something to do with escaping special characters! How nasty is that? And the Sphinx user manual does not really mention how to deal with special characters. Anyway the solution is that you simply use backslash (\) to escape special characters. Suppose my host is localhost and user name is root and password is crack!t, then here's a typical 'source' block in sphinx configuration:

source someSource
{
type = mysql
sql_host = localhost
sql_user = root
sql_pass = crack\!t
sql_db = mffl
sql_port = 3306

sql_query = \
select store_id+1000,store_id as id,'store' as type,title,title as data,body from store union \
select brand_id+2000,brand_id as id,'brand' as type,title,title as data,body from brand union \
select style_id+3000,style_id as id,'keyword' as type,title,title as data,body from keyword

sql_attr_uint = id
sql_attr_uint = sort
sql_attr_string = type
sql_field_string = title
sql_field_string = data
}

Note how I escape the exclamation mark in sql_pass with a backslash (\) haha!