datout

datout: This command will extract fits files from a DAT tape and will copy them into a Disk unit

datNo	Mandatory. This is the DAT device number. So for /dev/rmt/0 this parameter must be 0
from	Mandatory. This is the first file to start with. First file on tape is always 1
total	Mandatory. How many files we want to be copied on disk. If we want the whole tape, we can put a big number here (say 100000). At the End Of Tape, the program will stop automatically.
prefix	Optional. Files copied into disk are named as 00001.fits, 00002.fits, 00003.fits... and so on. If you specify this parameter, the prefix will be added to the number, with the _ character. So, if you specify this parameter to be "pepe", the files will be called pepe_00001.fits, pepe_00002.fits... and so on.

This command is thought to be run in background without user intervention. The problem can appear if when extracting a file, there is on disk a file with the same name. To avoid user manipulation, the program will add the extension ".fits" to the file being extracted, as many times as needed. For example: Imagine you have entered this command for extracting 4 files starting on number 2 from /dev/rmt/1 with prefix mar:

1 is the dat drive (/dev/rmt/1), 2 is the first file to be extracted, 4 is the number of files to be extracted and "mar" is the prefix.

if, after finished we give the same command again, there will be a name conflict as the files exist on disk. So the program will automatically rename the files being extracted to:

mar_00002.fits.fits, mar_00003.fits.fits, mar_00004.fits.fits and mar_00005.fits.fits

So the original mar_00002.fits, mar_00003.fits, etc, are not overwriten. Again, if we give the same command again, the program will add another ".fits" extension to the files being extracted, so we will have the new extracted files as: