Yes, that's expected. If a command substitution undergoes word splitting, the output will be split on whitespace. If it doesn't (you use the "$(...)" form, with quotes around), the output forms a single word, which will result in 'a b c' as the single value of $k.
This will do what you want: $ eval "for k in $(echo \"a b\" c); do echo \$k; done" a b c First the command substitution is performed inside the double quoted string, resulting in eval 'for k in "a b" c; do echo $k; done' being executed. Running scripts with 'set -xv' is helpful in figuring out this sort of thing. _______________________________________________ Bug-bash mailing list Bug-bash@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-bash
