I was about to explore the difference. I have them conflated in my head at the moment.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.