mjhjmtu

I'm trying to understand how to work with the shell variable IFS. I have the following code:

#!/bin/bash

ourpath=$PATH
oldIFS=$IFS
IFS=":"
echo "ourpath = $ourpath"
for directory in "$ourpath"; do
 echo "directory = $directory"
done

IFS=$oldIFS

Running this using bash test.sh yields:

ourpath = ~/bin:/home/<user>/anaconda3/bin:/home/<user>/.local/bin:/home/<user>/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin:~/scripts
directory = ~/bin:/home/<user>/anaconda3/bin:/home/<user>/.local/bin:/home/<user>/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin:~/scripts

But I would expect directory to loop over the directories in $PATH because it should be split by :. What is going wrong here?

It's the exact same as with space: You have quoted $directory and it doesn't get split. If you remove the quotes then it will give you the result you're looking for.

I.e:

for directory in $ourpath ; do
 echo "directory = $directory"
done

Bonus points: It won't matter if $ourpath contains spaces because IFS is :, so it will only be split over :