I am trying to add text to an edit field.

Normally, I do this:
temp$ = EDIT$(1) + theText$
EDIT$(1) = temp$

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I do this because the following code is invalid:
EDIT$(1) = EDIT$(1) + theText$

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But in doing the mentioned code, edit fields cannot exceed the length of 
a string (256 characters). What can I do to get around this?