> I'm supposed to put together an Excel spreadsheet.  I've always been the
> type of person who would rather write a script than use Excel, but in
> this case I need to share data with people who use Excel.
> 
> I'm wondering if it's possible to get Ruby to create files that Excel can
> read?  I suspect that I should be able to use the CSV module for doing
> this.  Do I need to create a seperate header file or can the header be
> placed at the top of the CSV file?  (I don't have Excel, so I can't test
> this)
> 
> So for example, I need to make a spredsheet of students (columns) and
> quiz/homework/test scores, something like:
> 
> desc      student1   student2   student3  student4
> quiz1      80        92         78        87
> hw1        85        90         81        91
> test1      92        100        88        79
> hw2        100       99         83        100
> final      84        80         77        85
> 
> How would I set this up so that the CSV file written by Ruby can be read
> by Excel?
> 
> I suspect that at the first line of the file I would need to be:
> desc, student1, student2, student3, student4
> correct?  Then I would use CSV to write out the data which I would
> probably store in hashes.

Check out Win32OLE for Ruby.  You can actually interface directly with
Excel if your heart so desires. 
http://homepage1.nifty.com/markey/ruby/win32ole/index_e.html

Matt