announcement - Col: from records to CSV and vice-versa

[Martin Jambon <martin_jambon@emailuser.net>]

Col is a syntax library for the conversion between lists of records and 
CSV files with header. CSV (Comma-Separated Values) is a text format 
supported by spreadsheet programs. "records" are represented as OCaml 
records, tuples or objects, all being available and interconvertible.

   main URL: http://martin.jambon.free.fr/ocaml.html#col
   development/discussion wiki: http://ocaml.pbwiki.com/Col

For a demonstration of what the syntax can do, see
   http://martin.jambon.free.fr/col-doc.html

Here is a short example which defines a list of 2 records and saves them:

(* File test.ml *)
type col t = { x : float;
                y : float;
                title "The Title" : string = "no title" }

let data =
   let x = 1. in
   [ T.create ~x ~y:2. ();
     T.create ~y:4. ~x ~title:"line2" () ]

let _ = T.save_csv "data.csv" data
(* end *)

$ ocamlfind ocamlopt -o testcol test.ml -syntax camlp4o -package col -linkpkg
$ ./testcol
$ cat data.csv
x,y,"The Title"
1.,2.,"no title"
1.,4.,line2
$


This package is not well-documented but I have been using it intensively 
with openoffice.org and gnuplot, and it is stable. My largest record type 
has 49 fields and is still growing!


Have fun!


--
Martin Jambon, PhD
http://martin.jambon.free.fr

Edit http://wikiomics.org, bioinformatics wiki