[CLUG] Script : split a string

[Jean-Pierre Thibert]

Hello there,

I'm still working not learning script.
My problem is:

I get a variable from wget like
DATA="Eddy,Murphy,Cork,125,95.41"
String with comma separator

I need to split every fields like
FIRST_NAME="Eddy"
NAME="Murphy"
CITY="Cork"
RUN=125
AVERAGE=95.41

What I learned so far let me think that script is file oriented, but I 
would like to use memory variables instead.
I tried to use awk and I wrote

awk -v INPUT=$DATA 'BEGIN { n = split(INPUT, parts, ",")}'

As you can see INPUT passe the string into the "function" by value (I 
don't know if it's the good english expression). But is it a real function?
parts is an array with the differents fields. The function works fine.
print parts[1] works fine inside the function.
My problem is I can't find out how to get the array out of the function.
Any idea?

But maybe there is another easier way to do that ????

By the way, what is the usual way to write the variables, functions 
etc...  names? Capital? Lowercase? other?

Thank you for your help

-- 
Jean-Pierre