BASH + Best method of converting fields to variables

[Ow Mun Heng]

Guys,

	Writing a batch_create_new_user script.
input is a file with this format

Username:Full Name:Default Group:Default Shell:Home Directory:Password
 
and the using those fields ($1 $2 $3 etc) and passing then to the useradd program

I'm having some trouble getting bash to get the positional fields into variables which I
can then plug into useradd

eg:
pseudo code
for each line in input file
  do
	username=$1
	name=$2
	useradd -c "$2" $1
  done

I ended up using awk, which works but seems complicated

	eval `awk -F ':' \
        '{printf ("useradd -c \"%s\" ",$2)}; \
        length($3)>0 {printf ("-g %s ",$3)}; \
        length($4)>0 {printf ("-s %s ",$4)}; \
        length($5)>0 {printf ("-d %s ",$5)}; \
        {printf ("%s\n;",$1)};' $1`

Can it be done using bash itself? (without calling awk)
Actually I was hoping I can get awk to get the fields for the variables

psuedo code
username = awk -F: {'print $1}'
name = awk -F: {'print $2}'

Any takers??

BTW, what's the best way to check the number of fields in the input file?
I was thinkning of counting how many ":" there are in each line. But can't
figure out how to actually _do_ it.



-- 
Ow Mun Heng
Fedora GNU/Linux Core 2 on D600 1.4Ghz CPU kernel
2.6.7-2.jul1-interactive 
Neuromancer 17:13:44 up 5:56, 10 users, load average: 1.65, 1.32, 0.97