Use xls, csv or other type of file to make a float array in Objective-C - objective-c

Question

Hi all, I'm *very* new at the whole programming thing, but I really like it. Sorry if I do not have enough details
So pretty much, I have excel files that have columns with numbers ( I can't post a picture because I don't have 10 reputations yet.
I've been searching for a couple days and I haven't really found an answer to this. I was wondering if there is a way that I could either create multiple arrays from the file - I know we can't make matrices like matlab - that have the numbers in each column, i.e.
float numbers[] = {1.3, 1.2, 4.2};
Or create the excel file with numbers (the iWork version of excel), and import the numbers file into the xcode project and from there create the arrays
The issue I have is that there's around a thousand numbers so copying it one by one is extremely time consuming
sorry if this is confusing, please let me know if there's anything else I should add as information

Answer 1

There's two easy ways to do this, even if you are a beginner.
Open MS Excel, input your values, save excel document as .CSV file.
Then grab an objective-c CSV converter like this one here in github and you are done.
The second way, you could declare an array of numbers (in example, 'float matrix[5][5];') and use it however you see fit.
I've done both of my suggestions in seperate projects and both work very well. I used the first method for a 15 page excel document that I needed to use in my app, the second method I used in another app that I needed to constantly change the contents of the 2d array.
Once you declare the 'float matrix[5][5]' this is a 5x5 matrix (a.k.a. table) you can use it however you want. You could have the first array be the column and the second array be the row.

Answer 2

You mean generate objective-C source from a .csv file? One way to do this would be to use a scripting language like Perl:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
my #numbers = ();
while (<>) {
chomp;
push #numbers, $_;
}
my $numbers = join(', ', #numbers);
print qq(float numbers[] = {$numbers};\n);
This assumes that your .csv file (say foo.csv) has numbers in the first column and nothing else. If the file contains:
1.5
2.5
18842984
-4
And you pipe it to the script (foo.pl in this example):
cat foo.csv | perl foo.pl
It will output this:
float numbers[] = {1.5, 2.5, 18842984, -4};
Is that what you're trying to do?