String converted = input;
if ( input != null )
{
// first run the tokenizer on it specifying no delimiters so as to eliminate any escape constructs
final String [] tokens = new TokenizerImpl( input, "", '\\', "*").getTokens();
assert( tokens.length == 1 );
// now any '\' or '*' characters are to be taken literally
final String unescapedInput = tokens[ 0 ];