Hi,
I am using the ruby spreadsheet gem to create Excel files from within
Ruby.
Could someone tell me how to write a decimal value (in this case 34.00)
to an Excel cell.
I have looked in the documentation (http://spreadsheet.rubyforge.org/)
and found the method write_number.
I guess this will do what i want, but I cannot for the life of me get it
to work.
Thanks for any help.
Can no one help me?
Could someone at least tell me if there is a place (forum or mailing
list or whatever) where I can ask for help.
Thanks.
Sometimes some things don’t get responses, I guess. Sorry. D:
What’s your problem?
From: “Jim B.” [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 12:06 AM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: “ruby-talk ML” [email protected]
Subject: Re: Float in Spreadsheet
Sometimes some things don’t get responses, I guess. Sorry. D:
No worries, it’s just that spent ages writing this app and everything
works fine except this one thing, so it would be a shame if I couldn’t
sort it out.
All I want to do is write a decimal to a cell in a spreadsheet generated
using the ruby spreadsheet gem.
Currently I’m writing:
@invoice.row(32+i).push ‘’,i, groups[i-1],’’,groups_ue[i-1], 34, tot
Instead of 34 I want to write 34.00
However when I write:
@invoice.row(32+i).push ‘’,i, groups[i-1],’’,groups_ue[i-1], 34.00, tot
The program still writes 34 (without the decimal) to the cell.
Cheers for your help.
On Feb 12, 9:26 am, Jim B. [email protected] wrote:
The program still writes 34 (without the decimal) to the cell.
Excel treats 34 and 34.00 as the same number (and Ruby treat 34.0 and
34.00 the same).
fmt = Spreadsheet::Format.new(:number_format => ‘0.00’)
sheet1.row(1).set_format(1,fmt)
Jim, Victor,
On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 9:39 AM, Victor H. Goff III
[email protected] wrote:
This looks like a formatting problem. I don’t have an answer for you, but
if the format for that cell has no trailing zeros, then this would be the
affect you are seeing.
That’s exactly right. Add a Format:
fmt = Spreadsheet::Format.new :number_format => ‘0.0’
row = @invoice.row(32+i)
row.push ‘’,i, groups[i-1],‘’,groups_ue[i-1], 34.00, tot
row.set_format 5, fmt
(There is also a Column Default-Format, but that seems not to work atm
- will fix asap.)
hth
Hannes
This looks like a formatting problem. I don’t have an answer for you,
but
if the format for that cell has no trailing zeros, then this would be
the
affect you are seeing.
I hope it helps… Sorry, I have not confirmed this.
Warmest Regards,
Victor H. Goff III
Thanks ever so much for the replies.
The formatting now works perfectly.
I guess that the moral of the story is that Thursday morning is a good
time to post questions 
Thanks again.
Jim
On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 5:00 AM, Jim B. [email protected] wrote:
I guess that the moral of the story is that Thursday morning is a good
time to post questions
Might I suggest is that the real moral is that the community is much
more
able, and therefore willing, to answer questions which provide enough
context, like what you’ve tried and wnat’s not working, than just
something
like “I read the documentation and I can’t get it to work.”
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#beprecise
Rick DeNatale
Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale
Might I suggest is that the real moral is that the community is much
more
able, and therefore willing, to answer questions which provide enough
context, like what you’ve tried and wnat’s not working, than just
something
like “I read the documentation and I can’t get it to work.”
Uh, get off your moral high horse Rick.
I can never understand people who make posts like this.
I tried for ages to get this to work, read the documentation, surfed the
net looking for solutions and essentially drew a blank before posting
here.
Maybe my initial question wasn’t precise enough for you, but apart from
that I don’t see what more I could have done.
On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 7:53 AM, Jim B. [email protected] wrote:
net looking for solutions and essentially drew a blank before posting
here.
Maybe my initial question wasn’t precise enough for you, but apart from
that I don’t see what more I could have done.
All I’m suggesting is that I see lots of questions like your initial
post
which don’t get replies because there’s not enough information to even
guess
what’s wrong. Not just here but all over the internet.
It was only after your third post in which you actually showed some
code,
that you got some help.
If you’d done that little bit more initially, you might have gotten your
answer right away.
None of us who try to help here get paid for it as far as I know.
If you want to take a suggestion as to how to get better results in the
future as a personal affront, it’s no skin off my nose.
–
Rick DeNatale
Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale
If you want to take a suggestion as to how to get better results in the
future as a personal affront, it’s no skin off my nose.
And if all you were trying to do was to make a suggestion (and not sound
like a sacrcastic tw@), then maybe you should work on your social
skills.
Alright, I had a couple of emails overnight agreeing (quite politely)
with Rick.
Rick, you’re right. I was wrong to react like I did.
I will try to make my questions more precise in future.
Thanks for your suggestion.
Laters,
Jim
I found a solution. To avoid leading zeros, you have to set the frmat as
follows:
nb_format = Spreadsheet::Format.new :number_format => ‘#,###’
sheet1.row(4).set_format(0, nb_format)
What is important - the rounding is made out of the box (1500.78 will be
formatted as 1,501, 0 will be formatted as empty cell) so no need to
write something else
Lars C. wrote:
On Feb 12, 9:26�am, Jim B. [email protected] wrote:
The program still writes 34 (without the decimal) to the cell.
Excel treats 34 and 34.00 as the same number (and Ruby treat 34.0 and
34.00 the same).fmt = Spreadsheet::Format.new(:number_format => ‘0.00’)
sheet1.row(1).set_format(1,fmt)
For me, te solution:
nb_format = Spreadsheet::Format.new :number_format => ‘0,000’
sheet1.row(4).set_format(0, nb_format)
works fine. If you want to add decimals, just do
nb_format = Spreadsheet::Format.new :number_format => ‘0,000.00’
sheet1.row(4).set_format(0, nb_format)
Now the problem is that if a number to be formatted is less than 1000,
you’ll get a new formatted value like that:
0,518.42
The question - how to avoid “unused” leading zeros?
Thanks