Bash set +x without it being printed

I hacked up a solution to this just recently when I became annoyed with it:

shopt -s expand_aliases
_xtrace() {
    case $1 in
        on) set -x ;;
        off) set +x ;;
    esac
}
alias xtrace='{ _xtrace $(cat); } 2>/dev/null <<<'

This allows you to enable and disable xtrace as in the following, where I'm logging how the arguments are assigned to variables:

xtrace on
ARG1=$1
ARG2=$2
xtrace off

And you get output that looks like:

$ ./script.sh one two
+ ARG1=one
+ ARG2=two

How about a solution based on a simplified version of @user108471:

shopt -s expand_aliases
alias trace_on='set -x'
alias trace_off='{ set +x; } 2>/dev/null'

trace_on
...stuff...
trace_off

You can use a subshell. Upon exiting the subshell, the setting to x will be lost:

( set -x ; command )

I had the same problem, and I was able to find a solution that doesn't use a subshell:

set -x
command
{ set +x; } 2>/dev/null