Bash messes up spaces in command line agruments.

[Herrmann, Justin]

Configuration Information [Automatically generated, do not change]:
Machine: i486
OS: linux-gnu
Compiler: gcc
Compilation CFLAGS:  -DPROGRAM='bash' -DCONF_HOSTTYPE='i486'
-DCONF_OSTYPE='linux-gnu' -DCONF_MACHTYPE='i486-pc-linux-gnu'
-DCONF_VENDOR='pc' -DLOCALEDIR='/usr/share/locale' -DPACKAGE='bash'
-DSHELL -DHAVE_CONFIG_H   -I.  -I../bash -I../bash/include -I../bash/lib
-g -02 -Wall
uname output: Linux justin-desktop 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Feb 12
07:42:25 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
Machine Type: i486-pc-linux-gnu

Bash Version: 3.2
Patch Level: 25
Release Status: release

Description: When I try to pass strings inside double or single quotes
as command line arguments to my Bash script, leading spaces, trailing
spaces, and multiple grouped embedded spaces are removed from the
string.  This also prevents me from passing in only a space or spaces as
arguments to my script.

Repeat-By: Save this script as 'startup':

#!/bin/bash
echo $#
for ((index = 0; index <= $#; index++))
do
        echo "$index |$(eval echo \${$index})|"
done
exit 0

then type: ./startup '     some       words          '

the script will print out:
1
0 |./startup|
1 |some words|