Reading a paragraph into a single variable?

[Robert E. Carneal]

I am trying to write an "obituary organizer" of sorts for my genealogy work. To make a long story short, suppose an obit (made up) says:

James William Smith, age 82, died at his home Monday, July 18, 2005. Suvivors include[list of survivors]. Services were at [place]. Conducting the graveside service was [name]. Pallbearers were [names]. Burial was at [name]. Preceding in death were [names]. James like to [names of hobbies, favorite activities]. Name of funeral home is [name]. (And so on for the rest of the obit.)
*******************

Ok, is there a faster way to read in paragraphs of text into one field? Right now, I am reading it one character at a time and appending it to the field until I hit an asterisk.

After I hit the asterisk, I proceed to extract the information I want to save, but perhaps there is a faster way to do this?
After I extract the information I want to save, I import it into my genealogy program.

I am using Power Basic for Dos.

Thank you.

Robert

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[This message has been edited by Robert E. Carneal (edited June 10, 2006).]

[Michael Mattias]

If all the information is in one text 'blob' you can

 s$         = (the blob of text)
 TheStory$  = ""
 StartPos   = 1
 iPos = INSTR (startpos, blob, "*")
 WHILE iPos
    Thepara$ = MID$ (s$, StartPos, ipos-StartPos+1)
    ThePara  = ThePara + (whatever goes at the asterisk) _
              + CHR$(13)+CHR$(10)     ' add 'newline' at end of para
    TheStory = TheStory$ + ThePara$
    StartPos = Ipos           ' position to first asterisk 
    WHILE MID$(S$, StartPos,1) = "*"  ' go past all asterisks found here
       INCR   StartPos
    WEND
    iPos    =  INSTR(startPos, S$, "*")  ' find next asterisk in S$
 WEND
 ' add any closing paragraph to TheStory$ here
' (if blob of text did not end in asterisk)

MCM

[Mel Bishop]

Have you tried the Line Input? i.e.,

open "somefile.txt" for input as #1
do until (something happens)
line input #1,temp$
if left$(temp$,1) = "*" then exit loop
text$ = text$ + " " + temp$
loop
close #1

Line Input ignores all other delimiting characters except the
Cr/Lf.

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[This message has been edited by Mel Bishop (edited June 10, 2006).]