Program Help Needed

[Tom Droege <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

One of you that is good at this sort of thing might take on a helpful 
project for me.

I am now networked (thanks to Rob Creager) and can see the data taking 
computer from my Linux office computer(s).

I need a script that will do the following to write a nights data from a 
single computer to CDs:

1) prompt for a directory   -  typical  /mnt/leejohn/newfol
2) prompt for a starting file name. Just the last 4 numbers before the 
.fits should be enough.  I now turn on well before dusk and just take data 
until dawn.  There are "bad" files at the beginning and end of a run.  I 
will typically examine the files to see where the good ones start and 
end.  Or whether the data is so bad that I discard the whole evening.
3) prompt for an ending file name.  Note the data usually wraps around 
midnight, so 4 digits are needed.  So with files with names like 
hira2654509.fits I might give a starting file of 4500 and an ending file of 
5017
4) prompt to load the first disk.
5) write 40 V and 40 I files to the first disk.
6) prompt for the second disk.
7) continue until done.
8) if there is room, write all the other files in the directory to 
disk.  This is only a couple of megabytes but it is useful to record all 
the programs used in the data taking in case I later want to know which 
version of the program I was running.

A script in perl or bash would be OK for me.  It does not have to work the 
first time as I can debug it.  I just don't know all the tricks to get 
something like this going.  A later modification will be to do the same 
thing using DVD disks.  Here one disk will usually do the evening.  If 
someone wants to take this on, let me know and I will work with you 
privately.  In general I like to spread the projects around so preference 
is given to someone who has not done a project with me before.  Hopefully 
one of you will step forward.

Tom Droege