Escaping backslashes (or other special characters) in the FTP locator

Using ovftool 3.0.1, I cannot figure out how to escape the backslash character when specifying the username and password in an FTP locator on the command line.

$ ovftool ftp://<DOMAIN>%5C<username>:<password>@<host>/Image.ova

keeps prompting me for the password, even if I repeatedly enter the correct one.

The same thing happens when I specify "ftp://<DOMAIN>%5C%5C<username>:<password>@<host>/Image.ova" instead.

Using the literal backslash character (i.e. <DOMAIN>\<username> or <DOMAIN>\\<username>) results in an error message saying "Error: cURL error: Couldn't resolve host name."

However, if I do not provide any credentials for the locator, ovftool prompts for the username and password. In that case, providing "<DOMAIN>\<username>" does work, though "<DOMAIN>%5C<username>" does not.

Please note that the FTP server unfortunately will not properly authenticate without prepending the domain.