sub initrooms
{
        my (@ta, %things, $b, @ar, $t, $de, $ex, $th, @a);
        open (RF, "rooms.txt")
                or die "could not open datafile: $!";
        $/ = undef;
        $b = (<RF>);
        $/ = "\n";
        @ar = split /0/, $b;
        foreach (@ar)
        {
                ($t, $de, $ex, $th) =  split ":", $_;
                if ($th eq "")
                {
                        next;
                }
                @ta = split "-", $th;
                %things = @ta;
                push @a, { TITLE => $t,  TEXT => $de, EXITS => $ex, THINGS => {%things}  };
        };
        return \@a;
}