How to put whitespace in launchd.conf variable values

Question

Working on a Mavericks, I'm trying to set global environment variable available in the terminal, spotlight and any GUI application.
To do so, I want to use launchd.conf to set my environment variables. I have been able to set some variables, until I wanted to put a whitespace in the variable values. Here is the content of my launchd.conf:
setenv MYVAR2 "my var"
setenv MYVAR3 "myvar"
setenv MYVAR4 "my\ var"
setenv MYVAR5 my var
setenv MYVAR6 myvar
setenv MYVAR7 my\ var
Then, here i what I tried in my terminal:
>grep -E "^setenv" /etc/launchd.conf | xargs -t -L 1 launchctl
launchctl setenv MYVAR2 my var
launchctl setenv MYVAR3 myvar
launchctl setenv MYVAR4 my\ var
launchctl setenv MYVAR5 my var
launchctl usage: setenv <key> <value>
launchctl setenv MYVAR6 myvar
launchctl setenv MYVAR7 my var
>env | grep MYVAR
MYVAR_IN_LAUNCHD_NOSPACE6=myvar
MYVAR_IN_LAUNCHD_NOSPACE3="myvar"
As you can see, all the variable containing a whitespace (even escaped with a backslash) are purely ignored. And I need to have several variables with whitespace inside.
Instead of the "grep" command, I rebooted my mac, but the result is the same.
Is there any workaround or solution  for this issue ?
Rémi

Answer 1

So you run this command in a shell:
launchctl setenv MYVAR2 "my var"
Then this:
launchctl getenv MYVAR2
and you get nothing? You relaunch Terminal and run
echo $MYVAR2
and get nothing?