fast way to split string?

I know there are a lot of threads about this subject, but i still need some help. i'm making a calender. all the data is in a text file as folllows:

&data=10/11/2002=event on this day|11/12/2002=event on this day|15/12/2002=event on this day|...&.

now i now how to split all the data and put it into arrays, but this goes to slow. i've seen some scripts around here wich bypass the string.split() that i use, but i can't figure out how to use them for my case. can some help me with a bit of explination.... thx P-Sch1FT