Question

Could you please tell me how to iterate over list where items can contain whitespaces?

x=("some word", "other word", "third word")
for word in $x ; do
    echo -e "$word\n"
done

how to force it to output:

some word
other word
third word

instead of:

some
word
(...)
third
word

Answer 1

To loop through items properly you need to use ${var[@]}. And you need to quote it to make sure that the items with spaces are not split: "${var[@]}".

All together:

x=("some word" "other word" "third word")
for word in "${x[@]}" ; do
  echo -e "$word\n"
done

Or, saner (thanks Charles Duffy) with printf:

x=("some word" "other word" "third word")
for word in "${x[@]}" ; do
  printf '%s\n\n' "$word"
done