The shell (bash, anyway) has a weird mix of support and lack of support for spaces/lists/etc.
For example, there is no way to store the `a b "c d"` in a regular variable in a way where you can then call something similar to `ls $VAR` and get the equivalent of `ls a b "c d"`. You can either get the behavior of `ls a b c d` or `ls "a b c d"`, but if you need `ls a b "c d"` you must go for an array variable with new syntax. This isn't necessarily a big hurdle, but it indicates that the concepts are hard to grasp and possibly inconsistent.
For example, there is no way to store the `a b "c d"` in a regular variable in a way where you can then call something similar to `ls $VAR` and get the equivalent of `ls a b "c d"`. You can either get the behavior of `ls a b c d` or `ls "a b c d"`, but if you need `ls a b "c d"` you must go for an array variable with new syntax. This isn't necessarily a big hurdle, but it indicates that the concepts are hard to grasp and possibly inconsistent.