FOR(1)

✨ FOR(1) — the fish-shell loop that eats 💅

okay bestie so this is for from the fish-shell manual set, page one of the iconic franchise, and honestly? it's giving "tiny syntax, huge power" 🔥 no cap, this is the little loop that could and it's about to carry your whole script fr fr.

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

for VARNAME in [VALUES ...]; COMMANDS ...; end

like, that's it. that's the whole vibe check. 🎀

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

so for is a loop construct — it runs the commands you give it in COMMANDS over and over, multiple times, once for each value. on every single iteration, the local variable named by VARNAME gets handed a brand-new value from VALUES. slay.

and if VALUES is empty? then COMMANDS literally does not get executed at all. not once. zero. 💀 empty list = no iterations, periodt.

here's the part people always get confused about (iykyk): VARNAME is visible after the loop terminates, and it holds the last value that got assigned to it. the variable doesn't just vanish into the void when end hits, okay? 👑

and if VARNAME doesn't already exist? it gets set in the local scope. for our purposes though, the rules go like this:

• if the for block is inside a function, there must be a local variable with the same name. ✨
• if the for block is not nested inside a function, then global and universal variables with the same name will be used, if they exist. 🦋

also much like set, for does not modify $status — but the evaluation of the commands underneath it totally can. so keep an eye on that bestie. 👀

and if you're ever stuck (no shame, we've all been there), the -h or --help option displays help about using this command. 🫶

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🎀 EXAMPLE 🎀

look at her go:

for i in foo bar baz; echo $i; end

# would output:
foo
bar
baz

iconic. ate and left no crumbs. 💅

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🦋 NOTES 🦋

okay so history lesson time and it matters, so listen up: the VARNAME was local to the for block in releases prior to 3.0.0. which means the variable did not survive the loop the way it does now. 😭

if you did something like this:

for var in a b c
    if break_from_loop
        break
    end
end
echo $var

then the last value assigned to var when the loop terminated would not be available outside the loop. so what echo $var would write depended entirely on whatever var was set to before the loop was run. and in practice? likely nothing. 🫠

so yeah — old fish, different rules. mind the version, bestie. ⭐

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

fish-shell developers 🧚

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and that's the whole page, bestie! this little beauty is from fish-shell — version 4.9, dated Sep 08, 2026 — so go forth, loop your hearts out, and remember: your VARNAME will still be there for you when it's over. 💖✨🎀