parsing excel files for speed & data access

[arcnon]

I need to parse some excel tab delimited files. I am NOT going to edit them just use them as a reference. The first row contains the column names and the first column each row is the id.

The files have various amounts of columns from 100 to 375 and as many rows as 700.

considering speed would the best approach be:
shift off the first line
split on the tabs

loop throught the rest of the file splitting on the tabs
and building a hash table.

$hashTable{$rowID}{$colID} = $dataIntersected;

is there a faster way of doing this?

Thanks for your input

 

[mlibeson]

Look for a Spreadsheet-ParseExcel module. I think you might find what you are looking for.


Michael Libeson

 

[Rieekan]

It really sounds as if you just have a tab delimited file (which Excel amongst other spreadsheet software can read) that you want to create processes for.

Based on that, I'd say your thoughts are correct for what you want to do. Spreadsheet-ParseExcel won't do you much good since you're not using an XLS (Excel proprietary) file.

- Rieekan