How do I “read” a variable on a while loop
You can write: while IFS= read -r line do echo “$line” done <<< “$the_list” See ยง3.6.7 “Here Strings” in the Bash Reference Manual. (I’ve also taken the liberty of adding some double-quotes, and adding -r and IFS= to read, to avoid too much mucking around with the contents of your variables.)