Process substitution and redirection captured into variables

$ free
                      total           used       free     shared     buffers    cached
Mem:       1923164    1742180     180984          0      13912      88384
-/+ buffers/cache:    1639884     283280
Swap:      2817132    1786860    1030272

$ read mem total used free shared buffers cached < <(free | tail -3)

$ echo $mem $total $used $free $shared $buffers $cached
Mem: 1923164 1742180 180984 0 13912 88384