converting an Excel (xls) file to a comma separated (csv) file without the GUI
Solution 1:
You can use xls2csv from the catdoc package if you're on Debian/Ubuntu
Solution 2:
In Java world you can use apache poi. You could start from the following Groovy snippet.
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(filename);
Workbook wb = new HSSFWorkbook(fis);
Sheet sheet = wb.getSheetAt(0);
for (Row row : sheet) {
for (Cell cell : row) {
doSomething(cell.toString())
}
}