#
#   readarray ARGS < <( xargs -n1 <<<"$var" ) &&
#   set -- "${ARGS[@]}" "$@"
#
# but POSIX shell has neither arrays nor command substitution, so instead we
# post-process each arg (as a line of input to sed) to backslash-escape any
# character that might be a shell metacharacter, then use eval to reverse
# that process (while maintaining the separation between arguments), and wrap
# the whole thing up as a single "set" statement.