Rename Read and Write Spreadsheet file

[PhillipBrooks]

These function names create undue confusion. Every semester, new students to LabVIEW post questions on the NI and LAVA forums asking how to use these functions to open, edit or load data from an Excel file (.xls).

Unfortunately, the name spreadsheet file has become synonymous with Excel. Even experienced computer users have an expectation of some sort of intelligent file when reading the title "Read from Spreadsheet File".

These functions should really be renamed to 'Read from' and 'Write to' DSV file...

Delimiter Separator Values  (wikipedia link)

[waldemar.hersacher]

Altough DSV is a more general term for CSV most of my colleagues and customers will prefer to rename them to CSV.

[altenbach]

CSV stads for comma-separated value, which does not even work well in countries that use comma as decimal separator. The default seperator is tab, same as when saving as text "*.txt (tab delimited)" in excel.

Things are also complicated by the fact that people specify an *.xls name for writing and things seem to work just fine, because it will open in excel, and excel is smart enough to deal with the internal format mismatch transparently. (90% of excel users don't understand the difference :o). Problems occur if they try to read a native *.xls file and expect it to work.

I am not sure, but I think that renaming these files now after 20 years might cause a lot of confusion. There are other spreadsheet formats, e.g. such as open office (*.ods). (see also the OpenDocument Format)

Maybe all we need is a new express VI that can read/write simple *.xls files without the need for the office toolkit but also lets us pick from many other formats (similar to the save dialog in excel). When reading a file, it would again look at the extension for clues and possibly open with a wizard that displays how the data would look for interactive finetuning of delimiter settings, etc. (again similar to excel). One problem is the fact that excel files can contain quite varied content that might not always be translatable into a plains ASCII table.

We already have the "write to measurement file" express VI. Maybe adding a few more format choices (*.xls, *.ods, etc.) is all we need.

Still, I am basically happy the way things are now. 😉

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Perhapse "Read Generic Spreadsheet File.vi" ?

[waldemar.hersacher]

altenbach wrote:

CSV stads for comma-separated value, which does not even work well in countries that use comma as decimal separator. 

I often get files ending in .csv which have '.' as thousend seperator, ',' as decimal seperator and ';' as column separator. It seems that CSV is a synonym for such files even when they have regional seperators. There will be nice conflicts if you get such files from Brasil and open it on a German system

 "Read Generic Spreadsheet File.vi" is a good idea.

[Tom_Hawkins]

See also my idea here...

[Coq_Rouge]

The problem is not the name. It is the user who do not bother to read the online help. This kind of user only toss out some VIs in a happy go lucky style. Wire it quickly together and then want some miracle to happen. And NO we do not need any more Express VIs

[PhillipBrooks]

Another example of spreadsheet functions being confused with Excel...

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/CSV-FILE-PROGRAMMING/m-p/1610942#M584090

[PhillipBrooks]

And another...

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Search-1-D-Array-not-working/m-p/1616566#M585218

[PhillipBrooks]

And another...

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Reading-spreadsheet/m-p/886782/highlight/true#M400750

[PhillipBrooks]

And another...

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Specific-data-arrangement-in-the-saved-file/m-p/1928855#M644394