When I expand shell variable which have tab chars or space chars, how it works.

Environment

• bash

Problems

When I defined shell values such below, how is space chars or tab chars in variable processed?

packages='
    httpd
    postgresql
    redis
'

yum install ${packages}

How to solve

It is expanded to yum httpd postgresql redis, and it works as expected.

Description

Let's see how it is expanded with using echo command.

#!/bin/bash
# your code goes here

packages='
    httpd
    postgresql
    redis
'

echo ${packages}
echo '${packages}'
echo "${packages}"

output

httpd postgresql redis
${packages}

    httpd
    postgresql
    redis

https://ideone.com/XfbkBI

When I quote variable with double quote, it expand, but tab characters or space characters does not replaced with single space.