extracting a set of strings from a text file

i have textfiles that contain a series of lines that look like this:

string0 .................................................... column3a column4a
string1384y0439 ..................................... column3b column4b
string223903990 ..................................... column3c column4c
string3 .................................................. column3d column4d
string4**67823678 ..................................... column3e column4e

can you help me write a C-shell script that will list all the unique strings before the ** ?
if a string is not followed by ** (eg. string0 and string3), the string should be in the list, whether or not it is unique.
I think I need to first filter out the lines without .................................. (which are always at the beginning and end part of the textfile).

can anyone help me with this please?
thanks a lot!

few people here can write C shell - here's awk & grep

awk -F'*'  '{print $1}' myfile | grep '*' | sort -u > unique
grep -v '*' myfile | sort >> unique

I hope redirection works the same in csh as everywhere else....

thanks jim! the code was a big help and i especially like the sorted output!

my problem is now reduced to the following:

1. how can i exclude the lines without "..................................." (the first 5 lines and last 2 lines in the file)
2. for lines with strings in the first column that are not suffixed by " ** ", how can i keep the rest of the line from being displayed? (only the string in the first column should be displayed)

does anyone have any ideas?
thank you!