Xls2csv

The correct title of this article is xls2csv. The initial letter is capitalized due to technical restrictions.

xls2csv is a command line script that recodes a spreadsheet's charset and saves as CSV. It was written by Ken Prows.

Install

perl -MCPAN -e "install Locale::Recode"
perl -MCPAN -e "install Unicode::Map"
perl -MCPAN -e "install Spreadsheet::ParseExcel"
perl -MCPAN -e "install Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::FmtUnicode" # should be included with Spreadsheet::ParseExcel
perl -MCPAN -e "install Text::CSV_XS"

wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/K/KE/KEN/xls2csv-1.06.tar.gz

Basic usage

The following example will convert a spreadsheet that is in the WINDOWS-1252 character set (WinLatin1) and save it as a csv file in the UTF-8 character set.

xls2csv -x "1252spreadsheet.xls" -b WINDOWS-1252 -c "ut8csvfile.csv" -a UTF-8

This example with convert the worksheet named "Users" in the given spreadsheet.

xls2csv -x "multi_worksheet_spreadsheet.xls" -w "Users" -c "users.csv" 

Options

-x     : filename of the source spreadsheet
-b     : the character set the source spreadsheet is in (before)
-c     : the filename to save the generated csv file as
-a     : the character set the csv file should be converted to (after)
-q     : quiet mode
-s     : print a list of supported character sets
-h     : print help message
-v     : get version information
-W     : list worksheets in the spreadsheet specified by -x
-w     : specify the worksheet name to convert (defaults to the first worksheet)

Transpose csv files

If you need to transpose your csv matrix before using it (i.e., rows->columns and columns->rows), try the following little Perl script:

# Example CSV file
# FROM:
#  a1,a2,a3
#  b1,b2,b3
# TO:
#  a1,b1
#  a2,b2
#  a3,b3

perl -e '$unequal=0;$_=<>;s/\r?\n//;@out_rows=split(/\,/, $_);\
$num_out_rows=$#out_rows+1;while(<>){s/\r?\n//;@F=split(/\,/,$_);\
foreach $i (0 .. $#F){$out_rows[$i] .="\,$F[$i]";}if($num_out_rows !=$#F+1){\
$unequal=1;}}END{foreach $row (@out_rows){print"$row\n"}\
warn "\nWARNING! Rows in input had different numbers of columns\n" if $unequal;\
warn "\nTransposed table: result has $. columns and $num_out_rows rows\n\n" }' $1

See also

• CPAN

External links

• CPAN.org - xls2csv