How do I "read" a variable on a while loop

Question

How can I read from variable with while read line?

For example:

the_list=$(..code..)  while read line do         echo $line  done < $the_list 

using the code above gives me error:

./copy.sh: line 25: $the_list: ambiguous redirect 

Answer 1

You can write:

while IFS= read -r line do     echo "$line" done <<< "$the_list" 

See §3.6.7 "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.)

Answer 2

If you do not use the variable for anything else, you can even do without it:

while read line ; do     echo $line done < <( ... code ... )