bash - Add space between every letter

Question

How can I add spaces between every character or symbol within a UTF-8 document? E.g. 123hello! becomes 1 2 3 h e l l o !.

• I have BASH, OpenOffice.org, and gedit, if any of those can do that.
• I don't care if it sometimes leaves extra spaces in places (e.g. 2 or 3 spaces in a single place is no problem).

Answer 1

Shortest sed version

sed 's/./& /g'

Output

$ echo '123hello!' |  sed 's/./& /g'
1 2 3 h e l l o !

Obligatory awk version

awk '$1=$1' FS= OFS=" "

Output

$ echo '123hello!' |  awk '$1=$1' FS= OFS=" "
1 2 3 h e l l o !