Re: Fwd: Test files [WAS: Re: xlsread in Octave 3.6.4]

[Philip Nienhuis]

Markus wrote:
> Am 2013-09-20 13:56, schrieb Philip Nienhuis:
> :
> <snip>
> :
> > 1) get rid of the named NaN cols and rows who Matlab ignores too
> >
> > If there are extremely many of those, and reading them from XML takes
> > lots of time, sure, invest there.
> > Otherwise, have a look at xls2oct.m in the io package, it has a final
> > section for stripping enveloping empty rows and columns. It may do
> > just what you need.
>
> I've got already an idea how to do that. It will simplify my __readnr
> function too.
>
> > 2) implement Date and Time interpretation. (never take a look at it)
> >
> > At that point (date & time) the OF io package is not compatible with
> > Matlab. There are several reasons for that, but I won't digress into
> > those. Just note that severe headaches are looming.
> > Octave's xlsread returns numeric date "values" for dates later than 31
> > Dec 1899, and text strings for earlier dates; Matlab's xlsread usually
> > -not always- returns all dates as text strings. To convert numerical
> > Excel date values (in the 1/1/900 date system) to Octave datenums just
> > add 693960
>
> "although I can imagine this to be a desirable option for many users
> too." :P
> But I will not say it too loud :D

Please don't :-) because IMO this is UNdesirable.
(..unless you want those severe headaches, of course ... :P )

IMO it is better to just let the user (who is supposed to know the data) 
sort it out.

ODS and some Java-based .xls class libs return less ambiguous date 
output, so there it is meaningful to return Octave datenums.

<snip>
:
> By the way. I'll try a MXE build to test xlsxread in Windows. It said
> that the unzip command was not found.
> That's bit strange because the mxe build include system('awk')
> successful for example.
> Do you have any ideas what goes wrong?

Yes: unzip.exe is simply not included in (= built with) MXE. Same goes 
for a few other unpackers. I think it's not hard to add them to MXE, 
probably just use bzip2 or so as a template, but I had no time yet to 
look into it.
Maybe file a bug report for it.

In the mean time you can just download unzip.exe from the MinGW web site:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS/Extension/unzip/unzip-6.0-1/
(just take the binaries). Put them in the ./bin directory of where you 
installed MXE-Octave.

> > I do plan to make one more OF io package release (1.2.4) for Octave
> > 3.6.x in the next weeks; I plan to include the Java-free odsread there
> > (almost ready), hopefully also your xlsxread.
> > For those two new features I'd need the patched unpack from 3.7.x as
> > well.
>
> If you mean with "next weeks" at least two weeks, i guess yes.
> Tomorrow I'll going to clone octave-io an start including it.

First have a look at what's already included in io. I've stripped quite 
a bit of duplicate code, no need to introduce new copies.

Anyway could you please wait until I can sent you an io-1.3.4-beta (f. 
Octave-3.7.6+), in which your unpack step has already been included 
(i.e., for odsread)? That'll save you (and me) a bit of work.
ATM I have other 'distractions' - it might be after Wednesday anyway... 
so no hurry

Philip