How do I take a string and split it into 2 variables in bash?

Question

I have a string that is read in from a file in the format "firstname lastname". I want to split that string and put it into two separate variables $first and $last. What is the easiest way to do this?

Answer 1

read can do the splitting itself, e.g.

read  first last < name.txt

echo "$first"
echo "$last"