On Jan 19, 3:53pm, Han Pingtian wrote: } } Looks like when SHWORDSPLIT is on, both VAR+=$x and VAR+=($x) will } perform splitting on $x: You're forgetting that when SHWORDSPLIT is on, $array will perform splitting on $array. torch% setopt shwordsplit torch% array=(foo bar);v="xxx yyy";array+=$v;print -l "${array[@]}" foo bar xxx yyy