zsh: alias or shell function to only echo its command line, including shell control characters

Question

Using zsh, I'd like to create an alias or a shell function that operates as follows:

I want this alias or shell function to echo its command line without honoring any shell control characters such as < or > or & or $ or " or others.

In other words, consider the following example, where I'm using "xxx" as the name of this proposed alias or shell function:

xxx ls -Flastr "${something}" >/tmp/xyz &

It would simply echo the following as follows, without executing it, including the > and & and $ and { and } and ", and without honoring any of those special characters:

ls -Flastr "${something}" >/tmp/xyz &

I know I can do this by quoting the rest of the command line after the "xxx" and possibly escaping certain characters, but I'm looking for a way to make this occur without any extra quoting or escaping.

Also, I want this to be in effect only for the one, single line which is invoked via this alias or shell function, and not for the entire script.

Is this even possible under zsh?

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

A trick to do this is to write an alias that ends with # to make the rest of the line a comment, then pull the line from the history. Comments must be enabled with setopt interactive_comments. However, it's difficult to know where to start printing. This simple version just prints the whole line.

function xxx_function { print -lr -- ${history[$HISTCMD]}; }
alias xxx='xxx_function #'

Answer 2

This is a variation on the suggestion by Stéphane Chazelas, and it works for me. I corrected the original "Answer" here based on the comments, below, by Stéphane Chazelas ...

set -o interactive_comments -o extendedglob
_donothing() {}
alias '@=_donothing # '
handle_@() {
  [[ "${2}" == _donothing ]] && {
    print -r - "${1}"
  }
  return 0
}
preexec_functions=(handle_@)