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I need to create a script with a loop through a list of items. I want to insert a string in the script.

I tried:

for i in "
a
b
c";
do
 echo "test "$i
done

But that only outputs one string:

test a b c

How would I get this? 

testa
testb
testc

(a, b and c are just examples for some longer words, which I got from an OpenOffice Calc file)

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Where are you getting the abc list from? A file? Typing it directly? Standard input? – jw013 Nov 5 '12 at 21:41
i want to create a script and have this in the clipboard – rubo77 Nov 5 '12 at 21:55
And how do you plan to access this "clipboard" from the script? Pasting into standard input? Using something like xclip? – jw013 Nov 5 '12 at 21:57
I understand your question. you want me to improve the question itself... i edited it now – rubo77 Nov 5 '12 at 22:03

3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted 
export a="
a
b
c
"

for i in $a; do echo "test$i";done
share|improve this answer
thanks, that was what I needed – rubo77 Nov 5 '12 at 21:55
I just wonder, what's the difference to my script? why do you need to put the string in a variable $a first? – rubo77 Nov 5 '12 at 22:00
this solves it too: for i in $(echo "a b c"); do echo "test$i";done – rubo77 Nov 5 '12 at 22:04
2  
@rubo77 The difference is the $a is unquoted, meaning that it undergoes word splitting, whereas "a b c" is quoted, so the shell sees it as all one word. – jw013 Nov 5 '12 at 22:05
2  
Note that it undergoes work splitting and filename generation. Also, the "export" doesn't make sense here. What's wrong with for i in a b c; do echo "test$i"; done? – Stephane Chazelas Nov 5 '12 at 23:31
show 1 more comment
up vote 6 down vote

You'd use a while loop instead.

while read i
do
  echo "test$i"
done <<< 'a
b
c'
share|improve this answer
this works too, thanks – rubo77 Nov 5 '12 at 21:57
up vote 1 down vote

bash has a built in ability to do this with the curly brackets, that way you dont have to list out all your letters you want to use.

for i in {a..c}; do echo "test $i"; done
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