If you're like me, a sucker for executing bash scripts remotely with ssh, there are times when escaping dollars with backslashes makes you dizzy.
I found envsubst in my Linux dist, happy as a guy can be, until I noticed it replaces \$ as well.
Google didn't help. Until soon, when this very page has been picked up by the search bots. Look no further!
Usage: envrepl
Reads from standard input and replaces all $VAR with its environment value.
Example: echo '$USER' | envrepl