i got an email from the poster, who reports:

<hr>
<pre>
I don't know exactly what changed, but in version 1.18 or 1.19, the commands:
fossil setting crnl-glob *
fossil setting crnl-glob "*"
work perfectly.
</pre>
... (weird - fossil is prematurely ending my PRE block...)
<pre>
And BTW, previously neither single quotes or double quotes
worked to set the value to *. Single quotes were taken in
the value and double quotes gave the same error which I
mentioned in the thread.
</pre>
<hr>

Changing status from not-a-bug to fixed.

@Yogesh - if this comes back, please let us.