[PLUG] Spreadsheet Comparisons

Aaron Burt aaron at bavariati.org
Wed Oct 12 21:34:01 UTC 2011


On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 01:43:32PM -0700, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> Cross posted back to the PLUG list - follow up there
Thanks!

> <snip> I haven't used xlrd (or the likely Perl equivalent) but I have
> exported spreadsheets as CVS and processed them with 10 line Perl
> scripts, even vi sometimes.

A significant portion of my work is just turning stuff into tabbed
textfiles and processing them with cut, paste, join, grep and sed, with a
couple useful Python scripts, and vim for the corner cases.  I try to
always document what I do.

BTW, all y'all knew that Unix started as a text-processing system, right?

> At some point, you must invest a little time in learning to do "simple"
> programming.  I use Perl mostly because many friends do, but Python is a
> good option for most.   You can ignore 90% of either language, as long as
> you learn how to read in data, write out data, make simple tables, and do
> arithmetic.
<snip>
> This is not as much to aim for 100% automation, as to aim for 0%
> stuffing your head with unneeded facts and activities.

I strongly recommend SAMS' "Python Phrasebook", and the other language
books in that series.  It's just enough to get one up and running, and
perfect for folks who learn well by example and practice.  I still use mine
4 years later, since my brain is stuffed with too much other junk.


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