Just always quote variable interpolation and you will never have problems. sh-3.2$ f='Hello world' sh-3.2$ echo "${f}" Hello world sh-3.2$ for

Just always quote variable interpolation and you will never have problems. sh-3.2$ f='Hello world' sh-3.2$ echo "${f}" Hello world sh-3.2$ for i in "${f}"; do echo "${i}"; done Hello world sh-3.2$