The following Perl script generates an .xls file from a text file. It runs great in our linux test environment, but generates an empty spreadsheet (.xls) in our production environment when run via cron (cron works in test, as well.) Nothing jumps out at our sys admins in terms of system level settings that might account for this behavior. Towards the bottom of the script in the import_data subroutine, the correct number of lines is reported, but nothing is written to the spreadsheet and no errors are returned at either the script or system level. I ran it through the perl debugger but my skills fell short of being able to interactively watch it populate the file. The cron entry looks like this:
cd <script directory>; cvs2xls input.txt output.xls 2>&1
Any debugging tips would be appreciated, as well as potential system settings that I can forward on to our sysadmins.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use lib '/apps/tu01688/perl5/lib/perl5';
use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;
use Text::CSV::Simple;
BEGIN {
unshift @INC, "/apps/tu01688/jobs/mayo-expert";
};
my $infile = shift;
usage() unless defined $infile && -f $infile;
my $parser = Text::CSV::Simple->new;
my @data = $parser->read_file($infile);
my $headers = shift @data;
my $outfile = shift || $infile . ".xls";
my $subject = shift || 'worksheet';
sub usage {
print "csv2xls infile [outfile] [subject]\n";
exit;
}
my $workbook = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new($outfile);
my $bold = $workbook->add_format();
$bold->set_bold(1);
import_data($workbook, $subject, $headers, \@data);
# Add a worksheet
sub import_data {
my $workbook = shift;
my $base_name = shift;
my $colums = shift;
my $data = shift;
my $limit = shift || 50_000;
my $start_row = shift || 1;
my $worksheet = $workbook->add_worksheet($base_name);
$worksheet->add_write_handler(qr[\w], \&store_string_widths);
#$worksheet->add_write_handler(qr[\w]| \&store_string_widths);
my $w = 1;
$worksheet->write('A' . $start_row, $colums, ,$bold);
my $i = $start_row;
my $qty = 0;
for my $row (@$data) {
$qty++;
if ($i > $limit) {
$i = $start_row;
$w++;
$worksheet = $workbook->add_worksheet("$base_name - $w");
$worksheet->write('A1', $colums,$bold);
}
$worksheet->write($i++, 0, $row);
}
autofit_columns($worksheet);
warn "Converted $qty rows.";
return $worksheet;
}
###############################################################################
###############################################################################
#
# Functions used for Autofit.
#
###############################################################################
#
# Adjust the column widths to fit the longest string in the column.
#
sub autofit_columns {
my $worksheet = shift;
my $col = 0;
for my $width (@{$worksheet->{__col_widths}}) {
$worksheet->set_column($col, $col, $width) if $width;
$col++;
}
}
###############################################################################
#
# The following function is a callback that was added via add_write_handler()
# above. It modifies the write() function so that it stores the maximum
# unwrapped width of a string in a column.
#
sub store_string_widths {
my $worksheet = shift;
my $col = $_[1];
my $token = $_[2];
# Ignore some tokens that we aren't interested in.
return if not defined $token; # Ignore undefs.
return if $token eq ''; # Ignore blank cells.
return if ref $token eq 'ARRAY'; # Ignore array refs.
return if $token =~ /^=/; # Ignore formula
# Ignore numbers
#return if $token =~ /^([+-]?)(?=\d|\.\d)\d*(\.\d*)?([Ee]([+-]?\d+))?$/;
# Ignore various internal and external hyperlinks. In a real scenario
# you may wish to track the length of the optional strings used with
# urls.
return if $token =~ m{^[fh]tt?ps?://};
return if $token =~ m{^mailto:};
return if $token =~ m{^(?:in|ex)ternal:};
# We store the string width as data in the Worksheet object. We use
# a double underscore key name to avoid conflicts with future names.
#
my $old_width = $worksheet->{__col_widths}->[$col];
my $string_width = string_width($token);
if (not defined $old_width or $string_width > $old_width) {
# You may wish to set a minimum column width as follows.
#return undef if $string_width < 10;
$worksheet->{__col_widths}->[$col] = $string_width;
}
# Return control to write();
return undef;
}
###############################################################################
#
# Very simple conversion between string length and string width for Arial 10.
# See below for a more sophisticated method.
#
sub string_width {
return length $_[0];
}
2>&1to>>/tmp/my-cron-job.log 2>&1and then monitor that file. – Stefan Beckercrontab -e). Maybe you can already reproduce the issue there? – Stefan BeckerMAILTO=user@machine(with your email for instance) to the top of the crontab may recover some messages (that are emitted but now go to some forsaken account/log) – zdimcvs2xlsa typo in your cron entry, or just in the question here? – Jim Daviscrontab./path/to/perl /path/to/cvs2xls /path/to/input.txt /path/to/output.xls. Also don't assume any environment variables will be the same as at the command line, includingPATHandPERL5LIB(if necessary, add-I/path/to/libs). – haukex