Question

peterc@peterc-ml video $ VAR1="foo maltese mountain"
peterc@peterc-ml video $ VAR2="bar falcon goat"
peterc@peterc-ml video $ for X in 1 2 3
> do
> echo ??????
> done

The desired output is:

 foo bar
 maltese falcon
 mountain goat

Both VAR1 and VAR2 will always have the same number of elements.

Answer 1

You can use cut(1):

echo ${VAR1} | cut -d " " -f ${X}