Bourne/POSIX-like shells have a split+glob operator and it's invoked every time you leave a parameter expansion ( , ...), command substitution ( ), or arithmetic expansion ( ) unquoted in list context. Actually, you invoked it by mistake when you did for name in ${array[@]} instead of for name in "${array[@]}" . (Actually, you should beware that invoking that operator like that by mistake is source of many bugs and security vulnerabilities).