Bash: Handling lists where items have spaces within

guylikeme

Ive got a dynamically generated list where the user "may" put spaces inside the same element

e.g

LIST="'My first thing' 'My second thing'"

I then iterate and run commands towards it, but this produces

command My
command first
command thing
etc...

How can i make the shell smarter for this?!

deconduo

guylikeme wrote: »

Ive got a dynamically generated list where the user "may" put spaces inside the same element

e.g

LIST="'My first thing' 'My second thing'"

I then iterate and run commands towards it, but this produces

command My
command first
command thing
etc...

How can i make the shell smarter for this?!

You can set the field separator ($IFS) to be a newline character instead of a space:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/handling-filenames-with-spaces-in-bash.html

moycullen14

Use arrays

$ LIST=(A "B C D" E)
$ for VAR in "${LIST[@]}" ; do echo COMMAND $VAR; done
COMMAND A
COMMAND B C D
COMMAND E
$