Question

for i in "a" "a b"; do
    echo $i;
done

echoes:

a
a b

How can I write something like for i in $input; do and assign "a" "a b" to input? The whitespace is important. Otherwise $(echo ...) would work.

Edit: The question is not about files and neither about some input, which can be caught using $@.

Answer 1

Since you’re using bash, you could do this:

input=("a" "a b")

for i in "${input[@]}"; do
  echo $i
done