How to substitute in a string taken from a file the value of a variable set in the script in a bash script?

Question

bash

There is an example.txt file, which contains lines like:

# Comment 1
$VAR1/teststring1
# Comment 2
$VAR2/teststring2

There is a bash script:

#!/bin/bash

VAR1="hello"
VAR2="world"

STRING=`awk '!/^\ *#/&&(length > 0), ORS=" "' example.txt`

echo $STRING

Of course, when outputting, the variables from the file are printed as they are:
$VAR1/teststring1 $VAR2/teststring2
How can I force the script to substitute the values ​​above into these variables? Is there a simple and obvious way? Fencing a separate regexp replacement for this does not seem reasonable.

Answer 1

replace the last line with:
eval "echo $STRING"

Answer 2

If vlob then the dumbest option that comes to mind is to replace the last line with

echo $STRING | sed -e 's/\$VAR1/'$VAR1'/g' -e 's/\$VAR2/'$VAR2'/g'