If you are going to dump into a database anyway, it would seem simpler to to treat your input sources as databases also. I suggested DBD::AnyData becuase it supports multiple formats. It can import from any DBI accessible data source, including CSV, many different text formats, and Excel (with DBD::Excel). This means that you can use DBI to read all of your data regardless of its format and to write your data. In a situation such as you are describing that makes a lot more sense then using one module to read Excel, another to read CSV, a third to read text format foo and a fourth to read text format bar and a fifth to write the data. Actually DBD::AnyData makes use of those other modules (e.g. it would be using the excellent Spreadsheet::ParseExcel to actually read the Excel sheet or the excellent XML::Twig to read XML files), but provides you with a single interface to those modules and to the other parsing modules so that your script only needs one interface rather than one interface per format.

In reply to Re^3: how to consolidate xls/csv/text into one report? by jZed
in thread how to consolidate xls/csv/text into one report? by tphyahoo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.