Read a single word from a string and set as a variable value in bash - bash

Question

I have a need for a simple function to do the following:
#!/bin/bash
select_word() {
echo "Enter a string."
read STRING
## User enters "This is a string."
## Here will be the command to set each word to the below variables.
WORD_1=
WORD_2=
WORD_3=
WORD_4=
echo -e "Word 1 is: $WORD_1.\n Word 2 is: $WORD_2.\n"
echo -e "Word 3 is: $WORD_3.\n Word 4 is: $WORD_4.\n"
}
I am wanting to avoid using external tools such as sed or awk. Looking for bash builtin functions to use in order to pull each word from the string and set that word as a variable value. I will later use "wc" to count the number of characters in each word. I already know how to do that, I just need to know the bash method to pulling a word from user input strings.
If this question is a duplicate, I apologize as I could not find this specific question.

Answer 1

read can split the string itself.
read -r WORD1 WORD2 WORD3 WORD4
If you enter fewer than 4 words, the last variable(s) will be set to empty strings. If you enter more than 4 words, WORD4 will be the rest of the string, not just the 4th word.
You can also split the string into an array, if you don't know how many words will be entered ahead of time.
read -a words
WORD1=${words[0]}
WORD2=${words[1]}
WORD3=${words[2]}
WORD4=${words[3]}

Answer 2

You can convert the space delimited $STRING into an array, and then reference each array element in $WORD_n variables:
WORDS=($STRING)
WORD_1=${WORDS[0]}
WORD_2=${WORDS[1]}
Of with set -f, which will disable globing (e.g. changing * to list of files in current directory):
set -f
WORDS=($STRING)
set +f
WORD_1=${WORDS[0]}
WORD_2=${WORDS[1]}

Answer 3

If you need to be independent of the number of words typed, you can do:
#!/bin/bash
select_word() {
echo "Enter a string."
read STRING
## User enters "This is a string."
GENERAL_VAR_NAME="WORD_"
## Here will be the command to set each word to the below variables.
# Split string into an array, default delimiter whitespace
STRING=( $STRING )
# Number of array elements: ${#STRING[#]}
for (( c=1; c<=${#STRING[#]}; c++ ))
do
#echo -e "WORD $c is: ${STRING[$c]}"
NEW_WORD=`echo -e $GENERAL_VAR_NAME${c}`
printf -v $NEW_WORD "${STRING[$c]}"
done
# Check the output
for (( i=1; i<=${#STRING[#]}; i++ )); do
echo "WORD_$i is $WORD_$i"
done
}
select_word