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

Question

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

You may also want to refer to:

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