How to find and replace special chars within a string in zsh - replace

Question

I'm trying to build a secure copy protocol quick function. When I run the command it will work with a single file OR with the entire directory, but as soon as I put a /* after the local_repo it returns zsh: no matches found: hackingedu/*.
If I put the command scp hackingedu\/\* hackingedu the command works properly. I think I'm on the right track, but can't get it to work.
contains() {
string="$1"
substring="$2"
if test "${string#*$substring}" != "$string"
then
# echo '$substring is in $string'
return 1 # $substring is in $string
else
# echo '$substring is not in $string'
return 0 # $substring is not in $string
fi
}
# Quickly scp files in Workspace to Remote
function scp() {
local_repo="$1"
remote_repo="$2"
# find all the `*` and replace with `/*`
if [ contains $local_repo '*' ]; then
# replace all instances of * with \* <- HOW TO DO
fi
command scp -r $LOCAL_REPOS/$local_repo $ALEX_SERVER_UNAME#$ALEX_SERVER_PORT:$ALEX_REMOTE_ROOT_PATH/$remote_repo
# Description: $1: Local Repo | $2: Remote Repo
# Define ex: scpp local/path/to/file/or/directory/* remote/path/to/file/or/directory/*
# Live ex: scpp alexcory/index.php alexcory/index.php
# Live ex: scpp alexcory/* alexcory/*
#
# This Saves you from having long commands that look like this:
# scp -r ~/Google\ Drive/server/Dev/git\ repositories/hackingedu/* alexander#alexander.com:/home2/alexander/public_html/hackingedu/beta
}
Command trying to execute: scp -r ~/Google\ Drive/server/Dev/git\ repositories/hackingedu/* alexander#alexander.com:/home2/alexander/public_html/hackingedu/beta
Any ideas on how to find and replace an *? If there's a better way to do this please do tell! :)
If you know how to do this in bash I would like your input as well!
References:
How do you tell if a string contains another string in Unix shell scripting?
ZSH Find command replacement
ZSH Find command replacement 2
Using wildcards in commands with zsh

Answer 1

You can either prefix your scp call using noglob (which will turn off globbing for that command, e.g. noglob ls *) or use
autoload -U url-quote-magic
zle -N self-insert url-quote-magic
zstyle -e :urlglobber url-other-schema '[[ $words[1] == scp ]] && reply=("*") || reply=(http https ftp)'
the above should make zsh auto quote * when you use scp.
[...]
BTW, in any case, you should learn that you can easily quote special characters using ${(q)variable_name}, e.g.
% foo='*&$%normal_chars'
% echo $foo
*&$%normal_chars
% echo ${(q)foo}
\*\&\$%normal_chars