Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello all,
I've been making some progress on splitting out this input file, but just can't figure it out completely.

Tried everything suggested, (sincere thanks to all who sent them) but couldn't get the array solution nor the awk nor the Python examples to work.

Here's what I've written so far. It does what I need at first - that is when it encounters a dashed line in the input, it skips the next blank line, then reads the next line of text, extracts a portion of that for the output filename (using 1st 20 char., compress spaces, and substiture slashes if they exist), but then I need it to read whatever text comes next into the output file just created, down to the next dashed lines it finds, then exit that loop and create the next output file as before.

First I tried another while loop (now commented out), but it just runs away and reads the whole file without stopping. I then tried just a second if statement I have inside the first, but this one reads only one more line of text and exits to the outer loop.

I know the way I do it might be clumsy, but it's all that I know and all that I've been able to find in the forums and on the internet. Can anyone help with this second loop? Thanks.

------------------------

#!/bin/ksh
file=$1
while read line; do

#extract first 10 characters to see if it's a dashed line delimiter
check=$(echo $line | awk '{ print substr( $0, 0, 10)}')
if [[ "$check" == "----------" ]]; then

#skip blank line
read line
read line

#extract first 20 characters of third line for output filename
path1=$(echo $line | awk '{ print substr( $0, 0, 20)}')

#remove any spaces
path2=$(echo $path1 | sed 's/ //g')

#if one exists, replace slash w/underscore
path=$(echo $path2 | sed 's/\//_/')

#create output file
echo $line > ${path}.stg_chk_out

############# THIS INNER LOOP NOT WORKING

#continue to read until next delimiter
####### while read line; do
check=$(echo $line | awk '{ print substr( $0, 0, 10)}')
if [[ "$check" != "----------" ]]; then
echo $line >> ${path}.stg_chk_out
read line
check=$(echo $line | awk '{ print substr( $0, 0, 10)}')
fi
###### done < $file
fi
done < $file