Why doesn't assigning strings values containing spaces work?

[rstuart-indue]

There appears to be issues when specifying values that contain spaces.
eg:

nsswitch { 'current':
  group => 'files ldap',
}

The above returns an error:

Error: value: "files\\ ldap"
Execution of '/usr/sbin/svccfg -s svc:/system/name-service/switch setprop config/group=files\ ldap' returned 1: svccfg: Unknown type "files\".

Error: /Stage[main]/Profile::Base::Solaris::Ldap/Nsswitch[current]/group: change from 'files' to 'files ldap' failed: value: "files\\ ldap"
Execution of '/usr/sbin/svccfg -s svc:/system/name-service/switch setprop config/group=files\ ldap' returned 1: svccfg: Unknown type "files\".

But this does not occur if the value was set to "files ldap" manually.