Advanced cbq shell : SetQueryParams after popping from a variable stack has encoding issue. Strings are treated as binary values

cbq> \set -$a "fun";
cbq> \push -$a "not fun";
cbq> select $a;
{
"requestID": "07b6497a-09f0-4ba1-9dc3-002e70f9b882",
"signature":

{ "$1": "json" }

,
"results": [

{ "$1": "not fun" }

],
"status": "success",
"metrics":

{ "elapsedTime": "458.671µs", "executionTime": "424.298µs", "resultCount": 1, "resultSize": 39 }

}
cbq> \pop;
cbq> select $a;
{
"requestID": "38dd2948-5b59-402b-8410-311fc90204dc",
"signature":

{ "$1": "json" }

,
"results": [

{ "$1": "\u003cbinary (3 b)\u003e" }

],
"status": "success",
"metrics":

{ "elapsedTime": "446.049µs", "executionTime": "413.763µs", "resultCount": 1, "resultSize": 56 }

}

cbq> \SET;
Query Parameters ::

Named Parameters ::
Parameter name : a Value ["fun"]

User Defined Session Parameters ::

Predefined Session Parameters ::
Parameter name : histfile Value [".cbq_history"]