Excel to Latex table convertor

This is a quick script I hacked up to help doing tables in latex. Written for OSX 10.4 and your latex must use the longtable package.

1. Copy the excel table you want to convert
2. Run this code (excel2latex.rb), it will place the latex in the clipboard
3. Paste into your latex document

#!/usr/bin/ruby
# (c) 2005 Tom Counsell tom@counsell.org
# Licenced under the GPL
#
# Converts excel tables into latex tables
#
# Requires Mac OSX 10.4, although could be adapted for other platoforms
#
# To use, copy the excel table you want to convert to the clipboard
# Run this code
# The latex code will be in the clipboard ready to paste
#
# Let me know of any bugfixes or suggestions

require 'csv'

def escape_latex( string )
    string.gsub( %r{([&$#%])} ) { '\\' + $1 }
end

text = `pbpaste`
lines = text.split("\r")
lines = lines.map { |line| line.split("\t") }
columns = lines.map { |line| line.size }.max
header = lines.shift

pbcopy = IO.popen('pbcopy','w+')

pbcopy.puts "\\begin{center}" 
pbcopy.puts "\\begin{longtable}{#{'l '*columns}}" 
pbcopy.puts header.map{ |entry| escape_latex entry }.join(' & ')+' \\\\'
pbcopy.puts "\\endfirsthead" 
pbcopy.puts header.map{ |entry| escape_latex entry }.join(' & ')+' \\\\'
pbcopy.puts "\\endhead" 
pbcopy.puts "\\multicolumn{#{columns}}{r}{{Continued\\ldots}} \\" 
pbcopy.puts "\\endfoot" 
pbcopy.puts "\\hline" 
pbcopy.puts "\\endlastfoot" 
pbcopy.puts
lines.each do |row| 
    pbcopy.puts row.map{ |entry| escape_latex entry }.join(' & ')+' \\\\' 
end
pbcopy.puts
pbcopy.puts "\\end{longtable}" 
pbcopy.puts "\\end{center}" 
pbcopy.close_write
puts pbcopy.gets || "Ok. In clipboard"