I see your point, but I still have to disagree. Your task would be inherently complicated for any language - imagine trying to properly add another argument to

I see your point, but I still have to disagree. Your task would be inherently complicated for any language - imagine trying to properly add another argument to a function call written in python. In fact it has nothing to do with spaces in arguments, but rather re-parsing strings as shell commands which is always a tricky task. >In a program with proper arrays, I can instead parse X to the strings Well, if I were to write it in Java or Javascript, both of which have excellent support for arrays (the shell does as well, actually - via "set"), it still wouldn't get me an inch closer to achieving the goal. It seems to me that the real problem is lack of a first-class shell grammar parser, which affects most languages, not just the shell itself. Python just happens to have a shell grammar parser that is shipped with the installation.