detach process in bash for loop

Question

I often find myself wanting to look at a bunch of plots in a directory. I typically do something like:

for PLT in *.png; do bash -c "display ${PLT} &" ; done

since

for PLT in *.png; do display ${PLT} & ; done  #doesn't work :-(

Is there an easier/less ugly/better idiom for this sort of thing? I have also tried enclosing the commmand in parenthesis, but that doesn't work either (it only opens one plot)...

for PLT in *.png; do ( display ${PLT} ) ; done

EDIT

Note that I am working in an interactive terminal. If I write a script and break the second for loop into multiple lines, it works just fine...

Answer 1

Remove the semicolon after your &:

for PLT in *.png; do display ${PLT} & done

Also, using "${PLT}" is a good practice just in case your filenames have spaces in them.