displaying text of hook location

[Dr.CustUmz]

Way more in depth of what Im trying to accomplish here (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36485856/vbulletin-show-raw-text-of-hook-location-displaying-html-of-a-php-variable)

I'm trying to show the content of a hook location in a pre tag

so say I have a plugin that adds code at
$template_hook[navbar_buttons_left]

and I want to show the results of that code in its plain text

so in the navbar template I'm using
<pre>$template_hook[navbar_buttons_left]</pre>

I have moved and wrapped this hook in its own div just to play around with.

but I'm not able to get any results no matter how I try this.

so is it possible to (using the hook system) show the text of something grabbing that hook?

so a final output example would look something like:

NAVBAR:

link1 link2 link3 link4

<if ... >
<div>something</div>
</if>


where the <if ...
is all just plain text on the page