Why is my for loop printing so many results?

I am learning about for loops. Here is my code:

#!/bin/bash

# states list

states=('New York' 'Arizona' 'Texas')

# script to check which state is cool. 

for state in ${states[@]}
do
    if [ $state = 'New York' ]
    then
        echo 'New York is cool' 
    else
        echo 'Arizona rocks'
    fi
done

This is my output when I run it:

Arizona rocks
Arizona rocks
Arizona rocks
Arizona rocks

Why is it outputting 4 times and also the wrong answer?

Solution

Try this:

#!/bin/bash

# states list
states=('New York' 'Arizona' 'Texas')
# script to check which state is cool.

for state in "${states[@]}"
do
    if [[ "$state" == 'New York' ]]
    then
        echo 'New York is cool'
    else
        echo 'Arizona rocks'
    fi
done

The modifications I made are:

for state in "${states[@]}": the double quotes are critical since you have one array element with a space.
Your code loops on 4 items:
```
  New
  York
  Arizona
  Texas
```
And I modified your if statement to if [[ "$state" == 'New York' ]]. The double quotes on $state ensure you properly process the value if there is a space in it. Any variable should be in " ".
To debug such things, add echo "$state" inside your for loop to see what it is doing.