You should consider biterscripting ( http://www.biterscripting.com ) . It is great for parsing.

 Just read the file into a string variable, then parse it away using any of their stream editor commands.

var str input ; "file.txt > $input

To get everything upto the first dot (.), use

stex "]^.^1" $input

stex = string extractor

^.^ mean . (dot) is the search string,

^.^1 means the first instance of the search string, 

]^.^1 means everything up to (and excluding) the first instance of the search string,

etc. Read the help pages.