a='some var with spaces and a special space'
printf "%sn" $a

some
var
with
spaces
and
a
special space

a='some var with spaces and a special space'
printf "%sn" "$a" | while read field1 field2 ...

export JVM_EXTRA_OPTS='-XX:OnOutOfMemoryError="echo oh_no"'

JVM_OPTS="$JVM_OPTS $JVM_EXTRA_OPTS"
#...
exec $NUMACTL "$JAVA" $JVM_OPTS $cassandra_parms -cp "$CLASSPATH" $props "$class"