Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
programs. On Windows text file manipulation is more often done with pack-
aged software, SAS being one example.
Iftheresearcheriscomfortablewithtextfilesandscripting,theymaychoose
to stay in that format; but in all likelihood most researchers will convert their
data into a spreadsheet at a fairly early stage. Spreadsheet applications are very
useful all-in-one packages for manipulating data and performing calculations
on the data. Many people believe that the spreadsheet is one of the main rea-
sons that use of personal computers grew so rapidly in the 1980s.
Example
Importing a text file into Excel
Spreadsheets can import text file in certain formats. We show an
example with comma-separated variables (CSV). The input file, called
“input-data.txt”, looks as follows:
1, 10, 3030
2, 12, 5510
3, 11, 6800
4, 9, 5403
5, 8, 4930
We start MS Excel (Mac OS X version in this example), and open the file:
The defaults are OK, click
Next
:
(Continued)
