while loop - How to iterate through string one word at a time in zsh

Question

How do I modify the following code so that when run in zsh it expands $things and iterates through them one at a time?

things="one two"

for one_thing in $things; do
    echo $one_thing
done

I want the output to be:

one 
two

But as written above, it outputs:

one two

(I'm looking for the behavior that you get when running the above code in bash)

Answer 1

In order to see the behavior compatible with Bourne shell, you'd need to set the option SH_WORD_SPLIT:

setopt shwordsplit      # this can be unset by saying: unsetopt shwordsplit
things="one two"

for one_thing in $things; do
    echo $one_thing
done

would produce:

one
two

However, it's recommended to use an array for producing word splitting, e.g.,

things=(one two)

for one_thing in $things; do
    echo $one_thing
done

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You may also want to refer to:

3.1: Why does $var where var="foo bar" not do what I expect?