> export IFS Be careful exporting a changed IFS. That will inherit into child commands, which can cause unexpected breakage. A better model is to simply set IF

> export IFS Be careful exporting a changed IFS. That will inherit into child commands, which can cause unexpected breakage. A better model is to simply set IFS in the bash script (without export) or even better, as a one-off prefix to a command # leaves IFS set for following commands IFS=$'\n' $COMMAND # only sets IFS for one command IFS=$'\n' $COMMAND It is common to see saving/restoring IFS to protect against bugs elsewhere from a non-standard IFS: oldIFS="$IFS" IFS=$'\n' # ...stuff... IFS="$oldIFS" If you do this, a trap is a better idea to guarantee the restore happens. Better yet, let bash handle that for you automagically by using a local variable. cmd_with_nonstandard_ifs() { local IFS='\n' $COMMAND } cmd_with_nonstandard_ifs # IFS is back to normal here Also, unless you're using a really ancient version of bash, you shouldn't use backticks for command substitution. Use $() instead. # backticks need to be escaped when nested FOO="`basename "\`command_that_outputs_a_path\`"`" # much easier to read in the modern form FOO="$(basename "$(command_that_outputs_a_path)")" The thing is, you probably don't even need mess with IFS - shell globbing handles a lot of these things for you $ ls -1 a bc a b c d e ddd eee $ for file in * ; do echo "[$file]" ; done [a bc] [a b c d e] [ddd eee] and arguments be expanded correctly with "$@" show_args() { for arg in "$@" ; do echo "arg that supports spaces: [$arg]" done } show_args "foo bar" > find | xargs Of course, this is always a nice option that bypasses the need for bash. Minor suggestion: "find ." and "find ./" are identical.