[[[ % () { IFS=: vared argv; typeset -p argv } :foo:bar : baz \:foo\:bar:\::baz typeset -g -a argv=( '' foo:bar : baz ) % ]]] When vared opened, I just pressed <Enter> without changing the line in any way. Accordingly, I expected argv not to be changed by the edit. This is due to the spacesplit() call at the end of bin_vared(). Changing the value of the second parameter (allownull) doesn't fix it, but does cause «typeset -p argv» not to emit the two single quotes around the first value (!?).