Bash Built-In Variables

Internal

• bash Concepts

Standard Environment Variables

IFS

Note you must set IFS back to " " after setting it to something else, so the basic shell function work as expected. This is done with IFS=" ".

IFS and for

for honors the value of IFS (default the space). If you set IFS to something else, for will use that as field separator while iterating over the list.

Also see:

bash set List Separator