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Data in arrays, exports to CSV, facile API... what's not to love?

• protomyth 12y ago
  I remember on job where I wrote a lot of tools to load a database by reading an excel spreadsheet from perl[1]. It was amazingly fun. 1) perl does have some good libraries to read Excel files without exporting
  • collyw 12y ago
    I have this as a "temporary" solution (now three years old) for getting data into my database. OK, I am using Python, not Perl. There is nothing fun about debugging this. The non technical users can't tell the difference between 2 2.0 ' 2.0'. Usually excel will display the same thing to them. I recently replaced one of their excels with a web form. "Ughh,una mierda" (its shit). So I asked whast excel did that the web form didn't. Basically a bit of JS to give some copy paste functionality, and she is now a lot happier than that solution than she was with the excel.
  • macintux 12y ago
    Perl also has nice libraries for creating Excel files. Used that at my last job to generate reports from MySQL.
    • protomyth 12y ago
      Yep, it is amazing how much b_tching about crappy reports ends when you just give the raw data to a customer and let them pivot table to their heart's desire.
  • jqm 12y ago
    So does Python. Import and export. I get a lot of love from exporting to Excel from people who use what I make. I assume this feature makes it seem that they are doing a lot of work when they can quickly produce large spreadsheets for the boss. The boss? He usually doesn't know nor care. He knows he approved a check for some computer stuff some months ago.....