How can I read Excel files in Perl?

Question

I am looking for some examples/advice on how to write a Perl script to read data from an excel file then use the data read in (as a string hopefully) and pass it to another

Answer 1

Check out the synopsis in these modules:

• Spreadsheet::ParseExcel,
• Spreadsheet::WriteExcel

Answer 2

The Spreadsheet::ParseExcel module can read Excel files. The documentation includes examples how to use it.

Answer 3

You can use Spreadsheet::Read which will delegate to the appropriate module to read spreadsheets in a variety of formats such as Excel, OpenOffice and CSV.

On the other hand, given your problem description, I think you would be much better off using a standard configuration file format:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Config::Std;

read_config 'ftp.ini' => my %config;

for my $file ( keys %config ) {
    print "File: '$file'\n";
    print "$_: ", $config{$file}->{$_}, "\n"
        for qw( site protocol remote_name);
}

ftp.ini:

[c:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\this.txt]
site = ftp.example.com
protocol = ftp
remote_name = that.txt