Parsing is separating data and assigning parts of it into one or more variables. Parsing can assign each word in the data into a variable or can divide the data into smaller parts. Parsing is also useful to format data into columns.
The variables to receive data are named in a template. A template is a model telling how to split the data. It can be as simple as a list of variables to receive data. More complex templates can contain patterns; section Parsing with Patterns explains patterns.