How do I "read" a variable on a while loop
You can write:
while IFS= read -r linedo echo "$line"done <<< "$the_list"See ยง3.6.7 "Here Strings" in the Bash Reference Manual.
(I've also taken the liberty of adding some double-quotes, and adding -r and IFS= to read, to avoid too much mucking around with the contents of your variables.)
If you do not use the variable for anything else, you can even do without it:
while read line ; do echo $linedone < <( ... code ... )
You can just use
your_code | while read line;do echo $linedoneif you don't mind the while loop executing in a subshell (any variables you modify won't be visible in the parent after the done).