Exporting from C to Excel.

[HKKID]

I've got a program in C that creates a 2 dimensional array pN with dimensions of [nt] and [nx]. I need to export the array to excel, so I can do useful math on it.

I can get the fwrite command to save a 1d array for me, but not a 2d array. Tried looking up programming guides online, and all the ones I could find are limited to 1d arrays as well.


The best I could come up with was to try and break my array up into a bunch of 1 dimensional arrays, and export each of them individually. However, since my 2d array is something like 300 X 1000 (exact size depends on user input), this isn't a very practical solution, even when put inside a for loop.

I've got all of 4 days programming experience, and don't speak "programmer " at all, so if you could limit your explanation to common english (as hard as I'm sure that is) I would greatly appriciate some help.




*Note, for what I want to do to the data later, I do need to export specifically to Excel. If there's a shortcut for doing that versus exporting to a more general format (like a .txt file or a generic spreadsheet), I'd rather take the shortcut.

Thanks in advance.

[sicarie]

I've got a program in C that creates a 2 dimensional array pN with dimensions of [nt] and [nx]. I need to export the array to excel, so I can do useful math on it.

I can get the fwrite command to save a 1d array for me, but not a 2d array. Tried looking up programming guides online, and all the ones I could find are limited to 1d arrays as well.


The best I could come up with was to try and break my array up into a bunch of 1 dimensional arrays, and export each of them individually. However, since my 2d array is something like 300 X 1000 (exact size depends on user input), this isn't a very practical solution, even when put inside a for loop.

I've got all of 4 days programming experience, and don't speak "programmer " at all, so if you could limit your explanation to common english (as hard as I'm sure that is) I would greatly appriciate some help.




*Note, for what I want to do to the data later, I do need to export specifically to Excel. If there's a shortcut for doing that versus exporting to a more general format (like a .txt file or a generic spreadsheet), I'd rather take the shortcut.

Thanks in advance.

The best idea I can think of is to print them to a file, comma-delimited, to import into Excel.

When you say you can do it for a 1d array, but not a 2d, what are you trying, and what did that return? Can you just not print the 2d array (the values for the first show up, but not the second)?

[HKKID]

The best idea I can think of is to print them to a file, comma-delimited, to import into Excel.

When you say you can do it for a 1d array, but not a 2d, what are you trying, and what did that return? Can you just not print the 2d array (the values for the first show up, but not the second)?

actually I can get it to Print the 2d array using the code below, I just can't figure out how to SAVE it.

for (i=0; i <= nx; i++)
		{
		for (m=1; m<=nt; m++)
			{
			printf("%f", pn[i][m]);
			printf("    ");
			}
		printf("\n");
		}

As for what I'm trying... I figured I would need something like this:

// code to create my array//

FILE *fp;

fp=fopen("spreadsheetname.xls", wb);  /* I have no idea why the "wb" is there, but it shows up in all the examples I could find, so I'm assuming it matters */

fwrite(pn, [[something to indicate the location of the data I want to save]], [[something to indicate location on the .xls file to put the data]], fp);

fclose(fp);

But, I've got no clue what the syntax for the part in the middle should be.

For sake of reference, the relevant part of the programming guide I've been using is Here.

[Banfa]

fwrite writes binary data which is not what you want, it is not outputting the data in a format readable by Excel. For the format to be readable by Excel it will also need to be readable by you in Notepad.

However all is not lost, there is a function fprintf, this is very similar to printf except that it outputs to a file rather than the screen.

You will need to alter you printf loop to an fprintf loop and also make it output a comma instead of the spaces between each value.


I will say this though, c is capable of doing any calculations that Excel is and if you plan envolves Exporting to Excel doing some calculations and then re-Imorting the data back to the program then I would say you are making a serious design error.

[HKKID]

I will say this though, c is capable of doing any calculations that Excel is and if you plan envolves Exporting to Excel doing some calculations and then re-Imorting the data back to the program then I would say you are making a serious design error.

Thanks for the help!

And to answer your question, I may be new at C, but I'm not an idiot. I wasn't planning on importing my data back into the program. I have a pre-built mathematica program that does peak fitting, uncertainty analysis, and a few other useful things for me. All i need to make that program do the things I'm interested in, is my data saved as a .xls file :-p.