getting output from external process in a variable

[Daan Hoogland <emacs@onecht.net>]

H all,

I'm doing some application programming in elisp. I read /etc/group with 
grep and edit the temporary buffer with results. now I end up with 
groupname:member1,member2 and I want it in a list:
(list "groupname" (list "member1" "member2"))
now I can edit the buffer to cantain the lisp expression and then 
evaluate it like:
(set 'var (list "groupname" (list "member1" "member2")))
and use var. But I was wondering wether there was somewhere maybe an 
api that can set a var to a region in the current buffer directly.

Am I understanding emacs and lisp here?
Is there maybe a better/quicker solution?

Is there such a function that could for instance read-list-from-text 
from start to end with delimiters?
Or one that can just take text and put it in a variable?

Any comment appreciated.

D.A.A.N.