3 ms·

> Combine them with ST2's ability to do a search and place cursors at every found location, and I can get a lot of weird stuff done quickly. Combine this with

> Combine them with ST2's ability to do a search and place cursors at every found location, and I can get a lot of weird stuff done quickly. Combine this with excel (use \t and \n in sublime for row and column respectively) and you get really powerful, really fast when it comes to converting information into a useable formats. I've also made use of excel's data validations to create drop downs in cells for making hundreds of lines of complex config for a rules engine in a few hours. Enter the configuration in excel, export to csv, use a ruby to import csv into a database table via existing orm. (Why not use the UI? The app is too slow.) I turned what would have been a week long data entry task into an afternoon of copying and pasting out of a another spreadsheet. (Why didn't I used the other spreadsheet? It was in a non-machine readable format. I had to convert the data to the proper format using my knowledge of the system internals.)

collyw 12y ago
I am going to have to waste even more hours this week fixing an excel spreadsheet where the data validation isn't working yet again.
doorhammer 12y ago
Nice! Yeah, I've done the excel bit with \n and \t as well. I have a little text-munging javascript app I wrote for splitting and merging things in certain ways. I also use the excel -> db route a lot, but I'm working with MS SQL Server so I'll just do the data import from excel to db. I get dirty looks sometimes when I talk about doing things this way, but it's really handy. If I know I'm going to have to do something more than once, I'll usually write a quick script for it, but otherwise, quick ad-hoc text manipulation with ST, excel and the javascript scripts I have is pretty fast and really flexible. Flexibility is the big thing for me. Often I won't think of every way I really need to manipulate the data right out of the gate, so being able to quickly work through and change things is handy.

collyw 12y ago

I am going to have to waste even more hours this week fixing an excel spreadsheet where the data validation isn't working yet again.

doorhammer 12y ago

Nice! Yeah, I've done the excel bit with \n and \t as well. I have a little text-munging javascript app I wrote for splitting and merging things in certain ways. I also use the excel -> db route a lot, but I'm working with MS SQL Server so I'll just do the data import from excel to db. I get dirty looks sometimes when I talk about doing things this way, but it's really handy. If I know I'm going to have to do something more than once, I'll usually write a quick script for it, but otherwise, quick ad-hoc text manipulation with ST, excel and the javascript scripts I have is pretty fast and really flexible. Flexibility is the big thing for me. Often I won't think of every way I really need to manipulate the data right out of the gate, so being able to quickly work through and change things is handy.