parsing tree from excel sheet

[Tim Chase]

On 2015-01-28 10:12, alb wrote:
> I've a document structure which is extremely simple and represented
> on a spreadsheet in the following way (a made up example):
> 
> subsystem | chapter | section | subsection | subsubsec |
>     A     |         |         |            |           |
>           | func0   |         |            |           |
>           |         |interface|            |           |
>           |         |latency  |            |           |
>           |         |priority |            |           |
>           | func1   |         |            |           |
>           |         |interface|            |           |
>           |         |latency  |            |           |
>           |         |priority |            |           |
> 
> And I'd like to get a tree like this:
> 
>     A
>     +-------> func0
>     |           +---> interface
>     |           +---> latency
>     |           \---> priority
>     \-------> func1
>                 +---> interface
>                 +---> latency
>                 +---> priority
> 
> I know about the xlrd module to get data from excel

If I have to get my code to read Excel files, xlrd is usually my
first and only stop.

> Does anyone recommend any other path other than scripting through
> these two modules?

Well, if you export from Excel as CSV, you can use the "csv" module
in the standard library.  This is actually my preferred route because
it prevents people (coughclientscough) from messing up the CSV file
with formatting, joined cells, and other weirdnesses that can choke
my utilities.

> Is there any more suitable module/example/project out there that
> would achieve the same result?

I don't believe there's anything that will natively do the work for
you.  Additionally, you'd have to clarify what should happen if two
rows in the same section had different sub-trees but the same
content/name.  Based on your use-case (LaTex export using these as
headers) I suspect you'd want a warning so you can repair the input
and re-run.  But it would be possible to default to either keeping or
squashing the duplicates.

> p.s.: I'm not extremely proficient in python, actually I'm just
> starting with it!

Well, you've come to the right place. Most of us are pretty fond of
Python here. :-)

-tkc