That's pretty simple to do, actually...
fid=fopen('yourfile.txt'); % open the file
while ~feof(fid) % begin loop, we'll break later...
l=fgetl(fid); % read a record into character variable
if strfind(l,'*'), break, end % found the first '*' so quit...
end
data=cell2mat(textscan(fid,repmat('%f',1,4),'collectoutput',1));
The last will read records of four numeric values until it runs out of data or there's a conversion error (which there will be at the next '*' record. But, that's ok, that's all you wanted... :)
To do multiple files, you dir with a suitable filename wildcard pattern to return the list of files and iterate over it.
