Usage of External Commands

Copying, moving and "tar"-ing selected files is handled directly by the application.

For other file handling activities external scripts can be created, or external binary applications can be used, provided that they accept filenames as an input. Typical examples of scripts include Bourne Shell based scripts or Midas scripts for reduction.See the Gasgano documentation for details.

Some care must be taken in not providing to the interpreter a command line exceeding the maximum amount of characters. This can easily happen when the amount of selected files is large and/or when the paths are very long.

If required, a facility is provided to supply the classification of the selected files as a command line argument. Scripts can be tailored to make use of this additional information. Click on the confirm button of the Script Directory Board to see the effect.

There is currently no facility to run the external commands in the background, so Gasgano will hang, until the external command terminates.

External Viewers like RTD, saoimage etc. can also be called via the button on the Toolbar. Three kinds of external viewers are foreseen, and can be set via the Preferences: