Writing to an excel sheet using Bash

Question

Is it possible to write to an excel sheet(any type) from a bash script ?

What I am looking for is something along these lines :

sed -e :a -e '$!N; s/\n/ /; ta' file.c > #( first coloumn ,second row of the spread sheet ) 
echo "$cdvar" > #( second coloumn ,third row of the spread sheet )

Thank you for your replies and suggestion .

You'd better cut off irrelevant stuff from question, like everything in code section. Sed and echo calls are irrelevant I guess — nshy, Jul 20 '12 at 12:28
No. However, you can write a comma or tab delimited text file which can probably be read by Excel. — sorpigal, Jul 20 '12 at 12:35
@Sorpigal thanks ! I knew about the import option but wanted to confirm that there is no bash solution :) — Gil, Jul 20 '12 at 12:40
You can write CSV files, but I guess it would be even easier in awk. — Axel, Jul 20 '12 at 12:41
@nshy The code snippet just matches my expectation :) Just to give a clear cut idea . — Gil, Jul 20 '12 at 12:42
@Geekasaur: Why `bash`? If you use `perl` or `python` there are libraries that can generate `xls` files. — sorpigal, Jul 20 '12 at 12:43
you probably mean: create xls from a command line. because, `sed` is not bash. it is an independent executable. if you allow sed, you can allow perl too. with perl it is easy... — clt60, Jul 20 '12 at 23:30

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 13 '21 at 02:25

You could write excel by bash, perl, python, .. I think that each program language has its solutions.

bash

You could use join or awk, and I think that there are other solutions.

join

If you want join to files with same column, look these posts: Bash join command and join in bash like in SAS

awk

You could write a csv, but you could rename into xls and then with excel, gnumeric, or other programs, it is recognized like xls.

ls -R -ltr / | head -50 | awk '{if ($5 >0) print $5,$9}' OFS="," > sample.xls

when you modify xls with excel, gnumeric, or other programs, and save in xls, you could not read by bash. So that @Geekasaur recommended perl or python solutions.

perl

You could write xls in perl, follow a sample:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;
my $workbook = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new("test.xls"); 
my $worksheet = $workbook->add_worksheet();
open(FH,"<file") or die "Cannot open file: $!\n";
my ($x,$y) = (0,0);
while (<FH>){ 
 chomp;
 @list = split /\s+/,$_;
 foreach my $c (@list){
    $worksheet->write($x, $y++, $c);     
 }
 $x++;$y=0;
}
close(FH);
$workbook->close();

And then you could modify xls with Spreadsheet::ParseExcel package: look How can I modify an existing Excel workbook with Perl? and reading and writing sample [Editor's note: This link is broken and has been reported to IBM]

python

You could write real xls in python, follow a sample:

#!/usr/local/bin/python
# Tool to convert CSV files (with configurable delimiter and text wrap
# character) to Excel spreadsheets.
import string
import sys
import getopt
import re
import os
import os.path
import csv
from pyExcelerator import *

def usage():
  """ Display the usage """
  print "Usage:" + sys.argv[0] + " [OPTIONS] csvfile"
  print "OPTIONS:"
  print "--title|-t: If set, the first line is the title line"
  print "--lines|-l n: Split output into files of n lines or less each"
  print "--sep|-s c [def:,] : The character to use for field delimiter"
  print "--output|o : output file name/pattern"
  print "--help|h : print this information"
  sys.exit(2)

def openExcelSheet(outputFileName):
  """ Opens a reference to an Excel WorkBook and Worksheet objects """
  workbook = Workbook()
  worksheet = workbook.add_sheet("Sheet 1")
  return workbook, worksheet

def writeExcelHeader(worksheet, titleCols):
  """ Write the header line into the worksheet """
  cno = 0
  for titleCol in titleCols:
    worksheet.write(0, cno, titleCol)
    cno = cno + 1

def writeExcelRow(worksheet, lno, columns):
  """ Write a non-header row into the worksheet """
  cno = 0
  for column in columns:
    worksheet.write(lno, cno, column)
    cno = cno + 1

def closeExcelSheet(workbook, outputFileName):
  """ Saves the in-memory WorkBook object into the specified file """
  workbook.save(outputFileName)

def getDefaultOutputFileName(inputFileName):
  """ Returns the name of the default output file based on the value
      of the input file. The default output file is always created in
      the current working directory. This can be overriden using the
      -o or --output option to explicitly specify an output file """
  baseName = os.path.basename(inputFileName)
  rootName = os.path.splitext(baseName)[0]
  return string.join([rootName, "xls"], '.')

def renameOutputFile(outputFileName, fno):
  """ Renames the output file name by appending the current file number
      to it """
  dirName, baseName = os.path.split(outputFileName)
  rootName, extName = os.path.splitext(baseName)
  backupFileBaseName = string.join([string.join([rootName, str(fno)], '-'), extName], '')
  backupFileName = os.path.join(dirName, backupFileBaseName)
  try:
    os.rename(outputFileName, backupFileName)
  except OSError:
    print "Error renaming output file:", outputFileName, "to", backupFileName, "...aborting"
    sys.exit(-1)

def validateOpts(opts):
  """ Returns option values specified, or the default if none """
  titlePresent = False
  linesPerFile = -1
  outputFileName = ""
  sepChar = ","
  for option, argval in opts:
    if (option in ("-t", "--title")):
      titlePresent = True
    if (option in ("-l", "--lines")):
      linesPerFile = int(argval)
    if (option in ("-s", "--sep")):
      sepChar = argval
    if (option in ("-o", "--output")):
      outputFileName = argval
    if (option in ("-h", "--help")):
      usage()
  return titlePresent, linesPerFile, sepChar, outputFileName

def main():
  """ This is how we are called """
  try:
    opts,args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], "tl:s:o:h", ["title", "lines=", "sep=", "output=", "help"])
  except getopt.GetoptError:
    usage()
  if (len(args) != 1):
    usage()
  inputFileName = args[0]
  try:
    inputFile = open(inputFileName, 'r')
  except IOError:
    print "File not found:", inputFileName, "...aborting"
    sys.exit(-1)
  titlePresent, linesPerFile, sepChar, outputFileName = validateOpts(opts)
  if (outputFileName == ""):
    outputFileName = getDefaultOutputFileName(inputFileName)
  workbook, worksheet = openExcelSheet(outputFileName)
  fno = 0
  lno = 0
  titleCols = []
  reader = csv.reader(inputFile, delimiter=sepChar)
  for line in reader:
    if (lno == 0 and titlePresent):
      if (len(titleCols) == 0):
        titleCols = line
      writeExcelHeader(worksheet, titleCols)
    else:
      writeExcelRow(worksheet, lno, line)
    lno = lno + 1
    if (linesPerFile != -1 and lno >= linesPerFile):
      closeExcelSheet(workbook, outputFileName)
      renameOutputFile(outputFileName, fno)
      fno = fno + 1
      lno = 0
      workbook, worksheet = openExcelSheet(outputFileName)
  inputFile.close()
  closeExcelSheet(workbook, outputFileName)
  if (fno > 0):
    renameOutputFile(outputFileName, fno)

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

And then you could also convert to csv with this sourceforge project. And if you could convert to csv, you could rewrite xls.. modifing the script.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 17 '15 at 18:45

You can easily do this by first creating a R script (xsltocsv), and then calling it from your Bash file.

The R script would look something like:

#!/usr/bin/Rscript

suppressMessages(library("gdata"))
suppressMessages(library("argparse"))

#. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

parser <- ArgumentParser(
description = "A script to convert a given xsl file to a csv one"
)

parser$add_argument(
  '-rn',
  '--print-row-names',
  action = 'store_true',
  help = 'outputs row names in the output csv file'
)

parser$add_argument(
  '-cn',
  '--print-column-names',
  action = 'store_true',
  help = 'outputs column names in the output csv file'
)

parser$add_argument(
  '-s',
  '--separator',
  metavar='separator',
  type='character',
  default=';',
  action = 'store',
  help = 'outputs column names in the output csv file'
)

parser$add_argument(
  "xsl",
  metavar = "xsl-file",
  action = "store",
  help = "xsl input file"
)

parser$add_argument(
  "csv",
  metavar = "csv-file",
  action = "store",
  help = "csv output file"
)

args <- parser$parse_args(commandArgs(TRUE))


#. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

vals <- read.xls(args$xsl)

write.table(n, file=args$csv, quote = FALSE,         
    col.names=args$print_column_names, 
    row.names=args$print_row_names, sep=args$separator)

Let us say that you put this into your system path after making the file executable (chmod +x xsltocsv). Then, invoke this script passing the associated parameters, and you are good to go ;)

Writing to an excel sheet using Bash

2 Answers2

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