# Shell words and quoting (K1261–K1265)

The parser accepts UTF-8 command lines and splits on unquoted spaces and
tabs. Single quotes preserve content literally. Double quotes preserve spaces
and allow a backslash to escape the next byte. Outside quotes a backslash also
escapes the next byte. Adjacent quoted and unquoted parts form one word;
empty quotes produce an empty word.

Output has fixed byte and word capacities. Unterminated quotes, trailing
backslashes, NUL bytes and capacity overflow return an error without exposing
partial output. This is a `no_std` parsing model. A real EL0 shell invocation
and product acceptance require separate guest evidence.