Re: Is this a bug by any chance?

On Sat, 5 Oct 2019 18:48:35 +0000 (UTC)
George R Goffe via Bug reports for the GNU Bourne Again SHell 
<bug-bash@gnu.org> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I just built the latest bash in an effort to determine if thie script shows a 
> bug or a ufu. Can you help me please?
> 
> I was expecting to see:
> 12345
> 
> Best regards AND thanks for your help,
> 
> George...
> 
> #!./bash -xv
>  x="1 2 3 4 5"
> + x='1 2 3 4 5'
>  for z in "$x"
>     do
>        echo "$z"
>     done
> + for z in "$x"
> + echo '1 2 3 4 5'
>  1 2 3 4 5
>  exit 0
> + exit 0
> 
> 

It's definitely not a bug. Quoting the expansion inhibits word splitting. Your 
loop iterates once over a single word. Said word is conveyed to echo as a 
single argument. In this case, said argument is printed by echo, with the 
addition of a newline character. If your ultimate intent is to store an 
arbitrary list of strings in a variable prior to iterating over them, you 
should use an array variable instead. As such, this would be a topic better 
suited to the help-bash list.

-- 
Kerin Millar