select from a constructed list of strings with whitespace?

Question

I trying to create a list of strings with spaces in, that I want to choose between in a select - something like this:

sel=""
while read l   
do
  sel=$(printf "%s '%s'" "$sel" "$l")
done< <(cd /some/data/directory;du -sh *)
select x in $sel
do
  break
done

The string sel looks like expected: "597G 2022" "49G analysis" "25K @Recycle", but the select looks like:

1) "597G      3) "49G       5) "25K
2) 2022"      4) analysis"  6) @Recycle"
#?

What I want to achieve is of course something like:

1) 597G 2022
2) 49G  analysis
3) 25K  @Recycle
#?

And more generally, something where you can select between strings built from several data sources in some way. I have looked for inspiration in several places, like here, but it doesn't quite work for my case.

Edit

I forgot to mention, this bash is rather old (and I can't update it, sadly):

[admin@CoMind-UniCron ~]# bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-QNAP-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Answer 1

You want to use an array of multiple strings there, not a single string that must be split correctly by the shell. Something like this:

#!/bin/bash
while read l

do
  sel+=( "$l" )
done< <(cd /some/data/directory;du -sh *)
select x in "${sel[@]}"
do
  break
done

Which produces the expected output:

$ foo.sh
1) 597G 2022
2) 50G  analysis
3) 32K  @Recycle
#? 

A safer approach, that can handle arbitrary file/dir names except newlines and is only a little more complex but can be used without worried in all situations is:

#!/bin/bash
while IFS= read -r l

do
  sel+=( "$l" )
done< <(shopt -s nullglob dotglob; cd /some/data/directory && du -sh -- *)
select x in "${sel[@]}"
do
  break
done

Answer 2

This is really over-thought.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
IFS='
'
select x in $(cd /some/data/directory && du -sh -- *); do
    break
done
unset IFS  # or save/restore it explicitly

As an added bonus, the only bashism here is the select.

Typescript:

$ ./cg
 1) 0   0
 2) 0   000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
 3) 0   000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
 4) 0   000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000a
 5) 0   000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000ą
 6) 60k 1028501896.pdf
 7) 0   a
 8) 16k a.bkp
 9) 36k a.cpio
10) 10k a.d
11) 36k a.patch
12) 60k a.pax
13) 84k a.png
14) 4k  b.cpio
15) 32k b.pax
16) 12k b.tar
17) 0   bugreport.cgi?bug=910770;mbox=yes;mboxmaint=yes
18) 74.2M       build-output
19) 796k        busybox
20) 428k        busybox_1%3a1.30.1-6+b3_amd64.deb
21) 0   CB_Unix
22) 4k  cg
#? 

The quoting like you're doing doesn't work because quote removal applies only to the original word; the result of parameter expansion is only field-split (and globbed). To do that, you need to tokenise the string as input:

eval "select x in $sel
do
  break
done"

and for obvious reasons you really shouldn't do this, since you haven't actually escaped the filenames:

$ ./cg
./cg: eval: line 11: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `''
./cg: eval: line 15: syntax error: unexpected end of file

if you really need to fork a process for each line and really need to store the du output in a big string then you should've done

#!/usr/bin/env bash
sel=
while read -r l; do
    sel="$(printf '%s %q' "$sel" "$l")"
done < <(cd /some/data/directory && du -sh -- *)
eval "select x in $sel; do
  break
done"

(I've disabled escape-mangling the paths, which you had on for some reason.)