ParseExcel-Parse Question

greysky has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm trying to use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel->Parse to read in an Excel spreadsheet, and am running into the problem that the call to ->Parse is taking way too long and using WAY too much resources. The Excel file I'm reading in is pretty large (~9.5MB), and is a burden on the parser. Has anyone else had this problem, and if so is there a way to parse only specified ranges of data with this package? Any help appreciated.

Comment on ParseExcel-Parse Question

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Re: ParseExcel-Parse Question by Biker (Priest) on Jul 06, 2001 at 13:58 UTC
Sorry. No solution. I can confirm that I'm suffering from the same problem, though. Luckily, in my implementation I never have any spreadsheets of the size you're seeing. Have you tried to contact the author of the module? f--k the world!!!! /dev/world has reached maximal mount count, check forced.	[reply]
Re: ParseExcel-Parse Question by MZSanford (Curate) on Jul 06, 2001 at 14:11 UTC
Saw this post and took a bit of a look around the module. I have noticed parsing is not the quickest, but i have always used very small spreadsheets. I checked the Parse routine and it reads in the complete file and parses it, causing large files to take awhile to load, even if you are only going to use one cell. The structure of the code would make it difficult to read only one cell, and the structure of the BIFF format is also working against you. If you knew the size of every cell, it would be possible to find it in the BIFF format, but a new module would be needed. Not much can be done to avoid a complete parse, and nothing i can see in Spreadsheet::ParseExcel may the foo be with you	[reply]