Iterate through list containing an asterisk in posix

Question

list="1 2 * 4"
for item in $list; do
  echo "$item"
done

The echo call in the loop evaluates the asterisk to be all the files in the current dir but I need a loop that prints the asterisk character.

I can't use an array (e.g list=('1' '2' '*' '4') ) because the implementation needs to work with posix and can't use bash.

Answer 1

You need to turn off globbing with set -f:

set -f
for item in $list
do
    echo "$item"
done
set +f