man bash https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8880603/loop-through-an-array-of-strings-in-bash --- begin ## declare an array variable, declare can be omitted declare -a arr=("element1" "element2" "element3") ## now loop through the above array for i in "${arr[@]}" do echo "$i" # or do whatever with individual element of the array done --- end You can access them using echo "${arr[0]}", "${arr[1]}" also also works for multi-line array declaration: declare -a arr=("element1" "element2" "element3" "element4" ) with a counter: =============== #!/bin/bash ## declare an array variable declare -a array=("one" "two" "three") # get length of an array arraylength=${#array[@]} # use for loop to read all values and indexes for (( i=1; i<${arraylength}+1; i++ )); do echo $i " / " ${arraylength} " : " ${array[$i-1]} done Output: 1 / 3 : one 2 / 3 : two 3 / 3 : three