thanks! the code compiles now (with minor tweaking i could figure out), so that i can at least try it out and upload it to the board.
Your question of what is dato: dato was what was being used to store the byte that goes into the shift-register LED driver. like in the LED driver example: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/LEDDriver only i made mine an array.
will update with news when i test it