That would be tilde, not (P).

http://rocky.github.io/zshdb/

Never really tried it myself, but the author has sought advice from
the lists on occasion.

I'll check it out.  Tx.

So, bottom line of this thread is that things have to be sent forward with the right massaging to make sure blanks are not removed: > "${(@f)vvar}" < ... trying to retrieve the blanks after the fact is impossible cuz they're gone.  Only thing left to wish for is someway of making it the default that all assignments will include *everything*.  Oh, and don't be fooled by a single element that happens to have newlines within it -- they might look the same but they ain't.  > % read  read -rd '' < testfile2 aaa < ... is a false friend because '$aaa' will be a single element.  Likewise > : ${vvar2::=$vvar} < is a false friend because it looses blanks.   Seems a verbatim exact assignment is not really provided, which seems very strange.  But Roman has shown a solution.