XLSgrep

#! /usr/bin/perl

# XLSgrep - search inside Microsoft Excel files
#
# Usage:   XLSgrep <search_pattern> file1 file2 ... fileX
#          cat file.xls | XLSgrep <search_pattern>
#
# Example: XLSgrep "[A-Z]\d{4,5}" cells.xls
#
# Written by Jon Allen (JJ) <jj@jonallen.info>
# http://perl.jonallen.info/projects/xlstools
#
# This program is free software - you may distribute it
# and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
# See http://perldoc.perl.org/index-license.html for details.


use strict;
use warnings;
use open IN => ":bytes";
use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel;
 
my $pattern = shift @ARGV or die("Search pattern must be supplied\n");
my $excel   = Spreadsheet::ParseExcel->new(
  NotSetCell  => 1,
  CellHandler => sub {
    my ($workbook,$sheet_index,$row,$col,$cell) = @_;
    if (my $value = $cell->Value) {
      chomp $value;
      print "$value\n" if ($value =~ /$pattern/);
    }
  }
);

undef $/;
while (<>) {
  $excel->Parse(\$_);
}