Speeding up reading from files

Hi,

I am using a BufferedReader to read character data in from a file. It
works but it's incredibly slow. (The file consists of a number of
separate messages, each separated by a special character. Each
message must be read into a separate string.)

I use the following code (exception handling removed for brevity):

            String text = new String("");
            BufferedReader in = null;
            in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new
FileInputStream(_msgFile)));
            int c;
            while ((c = in.read()) != -1) {
                if (c == '@') {
                    _msgList.add(text);
                    text = "";
                } else {
                    text += (char)c;
                }
            }
            if (text.length() > 0) {
                _msgList.add(text);
            }

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