Excel on the Command Line

Jon Allen
http://perl.jonallen.info - jj@jonallen.info
 Perl ‘one-liners’
• Perl’s command-line options can be used to
manipulate data without writing a full script
perl -le ‘print 2+2’
perl -nle ‘/pattern/ and print’ file.txt

• Improves on standard UNIX tools (grep, sed, awk)

• Can use all features of Perl (special variables,
regular expressions, etc.)

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 Perl command-line options
• Common options used for one-liners:
-e = execute Perl code
-n = non-printing input loop
-p = printing input loop
-l = automatic line-end processing
-a = autosplit fields to @F
-F = field separator for -a
-i = in-place file editing

• See ‘perldoc perlrun’ for the complete list

• Read ‘Minimal Perl’ (by Tim Maher, published by
Manning) for an in-depth tutorial

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 Not all data is text
• However…
• These tools are limited to processing text data - it
is not possible to ‘grep’ a Word document or a PDF
file
• Not always a problem - log files, config data, are
often stored as plain text

• For non-techies, predominant file format is

Microsoft Excel (.xls)

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 Excel - Perl for Windows?
• No, not really! :-)
• But there are similarities
– Ubiquitous
– Versatile
– Low barrier to entry - simple learning curve
– DWIM

• Perl = Swiss Army Chainsaw of the Internet

• Excel = Swiss Army Chainsaw of Business

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 Introducing the Excel modules
• Always search the CPAN - the hard work may
already have been done!

• Reading:
– Spreadsheet::ParseExcel
– http://search.cpan.org/dist/Spreadsheet-ParseExcel
• Writing:
– Spreadsheet::WriteExcel
– http://search.cpan.org/dist/Spreadsheet-WriteExcel

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 Spreadsheet::ParseExcel
• Read the value of cell A1 in the first worksheet
#! /Users/jj/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel;

my $file = shift @ARGV;

my $excel = Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Workbook->Parse($file);
my $worksheet = $excel->Worksheet(0);
my $cell = $worksheet->Cell(0,0);

print $cell->Value,"\n";

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 Spreadsheet::WriteExcel
• Create a new Excel file with a message in cell A1
#! /Users/jj/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;

my $file = shift @ARGV;

my $excel = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new($file);
my $worksheet = $excel->add_worksheet();

$worksheet->write('A1','Hello, World!');

• Huge amount of Excel features supported

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 Back to the command line
• The CPAN Excel modules work well, but they are
not really suitable for writing one-liners:

perl -MSpreadsheet::ParseExcel -e ‘$excel =

Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Workbook->Parse(“file.xl

• We’ve run out of space before even loading a file!

• Need new tools…

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 XLSgrep
• XLSgrep - proof of concept, simple replacement for
UNIX ‘grep’ command
XLSgrep ‘<pattern>’ file.xls

• Iterates over each cell in the spreadsheet, printing

those that match <pattern>
• See http://perl.jonallen.info/projects/xlstools
• Works, but very limited

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 XLSgrep - source extract
use open IN => ":bytes";

my $excel = Spreadsheet::ParseExcel->new(
NotSetCell => 1,
CellHandler => sub {
my ($workbook,$sheet_index,$row,$col,$cell) = @_;
if (my $value = $cell->Value) {
chomp $value;
print "$value\n" if ($value =~ /$pattern/);
}
}
);

undef $/;
while (<>) {
$excel->Parse(\$_);
}

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 XLSperl
• XLSperl - aims to allow any Perl one-liner to run
against an Excel file with little or no modification

• Standard ‘grep’ command:

perl -nle ‘/pattern/ and print’ file.txt

XLSperl -nle ‘/pattern/ and print’ file.xls

• See http://perl.jonallen.info/projects/xlstools

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 XLSperl - options
• Supports the following command-line options:
-e ‘code’ = Perl code to execute (required!)
-n = Assumes an input loop iterating
over each cell (default)
-a = Changes input loop to iterate over
each row, splitting cells to @F and %F
-F = Set input record separator (when
processing text data)
-p = Prints $_ at the end of each loop
-l = Automatic line-end processing
-w = Enable warnings

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 XLSperl - variables
• Adds new special variables:
$WS = Worksheet name
$ROW = Current row (1 .. x)
$COL = Current column name (A .. x)
$COLNUM = Current column number (1 .. x)
$CELL = Current cell (A1 .. ZZx)
@F = Array of cell values (in autosplit mode)
%F = Hash of cell values (in autosplit mode)

• @F and %F are tied (modifying $F[0] changes $F{A})

• $COL and $CELL are unavailable in autosplit mode

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 XLSperl - creating Excel files
• Adds new command - XLSprint
– Write a single row:
XLSprint “Hello”,“World”;
– Write to multiple filehandles (but don’t print plain text to
the same files!):
XLSprint STDOUT @cells;
XLSprint STDERR @errors;

• XLSperl can also process standard text documents,

enabling easy conversion to Excel format

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 XLSperl - examples
• Search multiple files and print matching cell
locations:
XLSperl -nle ‘/pattern/ and print
“$ARGV:$WS:$CELL - $_”’ *.xls

• Convert Excel file to CSV format:

XLSperl -lane ‘print join “,”,@F’ file.xls

• Extract specific column as text:

XLSperl -lane ‘print $F{B}’ file.xls

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 XLSperl - more examples
• Convert UNIX password file to Excel format:
XLSperl -F: -lane ‘next if /^#/; XLSprint @F’
/etc/passwd >passwd.xls

• Concatenate multiple Excel files:

XLSperl -lane ‘XLSprint @F’ *.xls >new.xls

• Extract rows from an Excel file:

XLSperl -lane ‘XLSprint @F if($ROW <= 10)’
old.xls >new.xls

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 Future enhancements
• Run as command interpreter (#!/usr/bin/XLSperl)
• Implement ‘-M’ option to load additional Perl
modules
• In-place editing of Excel files (use the ‘-i’ option),
that will keep formatting of original document

XLSperl -i.bak -pe ‘s/old/new/’ file.xls

• Any ideas?

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info

 Fin!

Thank you for listening!

Source code is available from

http://perl.jonallen.info/projects/xlstools

Excel on the Command Line perl.jonallen.info