Is it possible to opt out of dot notation or escape dot for field names?

[chrisirhc]

I'm considering migrating a project this library but there are field names containing dots x.y but these aren't to indicate nested fields.
Is there a way to opt-out of the path behavior? I do see the value in this feature but could there be a capability to escape the field names perhaps (e.g. x\.y\.z)?

I'm happy to contribute this feature but want to understand if any interest.

[crutchcorn]

Closing in favor of #639