What I am trying to do is just use Perl to convert a .xls table to a tab-delimited .txt file.
Writing a converter that uses the cell_handler() callback is trickier than writing a converter based on the standard interface because you have to keep track of your position in the workbook yourself.
Here is a sample xls2tab converter.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel;
use Data::Dumper;
my $parse_excel = new Spreadsheet::ParseExcel(CellHandler => \&cell_ha
+ndler,
NotSetCell => 1);
my $prev_index = -1;
my $prev_row = 0;
my $prev_col = 0;
my $workbook = $parse_excel->Parse('book1.xls');
# Define our own cell handler to reduce S::PE's memory use.
# This function will be called each time a cell is encountered.
# However, it will ignore blank cells so we have to keep track
# of our location in the worksheet so that we can pad out blank
# cells and rows.
#
sub cell_handler {
my $workbook = $_[0];
my $sheet_index = $_[1];
my $row = $_[2];
my $col = $_[3];
my $cell = $_[4];
# Only process the first worksheet
if ($sheet_index > 0) {
$workbook->ParseAbort(1);
return;
}
# Reset the col counter between rows
$prev_col = 0 if $row != $prev_row;
# Add tabs between fields and newlines between rows. Also pad
# any missing rows or columns.
#
print "\n" for $prev_row +1 .. $row;
print "\t" for $prev_col +1 .. $col;
# Print the formatted value of the cell
print $cell->{_Value};
# Keep track of where we are
$prev_row = $row;
$prev_col = $col;
}
--
John.
