How to read two variables under one read command and echo them separately?

Question

For example:

I want user to input A=a

and I have the command which I guess is totally wrong.

read -p "Enter something:" frsstring=secstring
echo $frsstring
echo $secstring
````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Answer 1

In bash you can use an array variable and change the IFS (internal field separator) special variable to = which normally contains space character, tab and newline to split words.

IFS='=' read -a arr -p "Enter something: "
echo "${arr[0]}"
echo "${arr[1]}"

Or you can use shell parameter expansion to remove the longest suffix and prefix pattern from the string:

read -p "Enter something: " str
echo "${str%%=*}" # remove longest suffix pattern `=*`
echo "${str##*=}" # remove longest prefix pattern `*=`

Answer 2

I don't know how could it be done with one command, but you could read the entire line, and then split it in the desired variables:

#!/bin/bash

read -p "Enter something:" line
frsstring=`echo "$line" | cut -f1 -d'='`
secstring=`echo "$line" | cut -f2 -d'='`


echo $frsstring
echo $secstring

I hope it could help