bash - replace space with new line

Use the tr command

echo "/path/to/file /path/to/file2 /path/to/file3 /path/to/file4 /path/to/file5"\
| tr " " "\n"

Found on http://www.unix.com/shell-programming-scripting/67831-replace-space-new-line.html

In this case I would use printf:

printf '%s\n' /path/to/file /path/to/file2 /path/to/file3 /path/to/file4 /path/to/file5

If there are spaces within the one of the paths, you can quote that filepath in order to prevent it from being split on the spaces:

printf '%s\n' /path/to/file '/path/to/file with spaces' /path/to/another/file

To transform text in general, tr is your best bet, as covered in an existing answer.

Be pragmatic, use sed!!

sed 's/\s\+/\n/g' file

The above says to substitute one or more whitespace characters (\s+) with newline (\n)

This is more or less:

'substitute /one space or more/ for /newline/ globally'

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