I've been using J for about year, mainly for fun and occasionally solving a
problem in at work after I've already solved it in something else.
I solved my first real problem using exclusively J. I evaluated the other
options and I felt the most comfortable with J.
The requirement: Create an excel workbook for each category of data and
then distribute it to the individuals that own those categories. I have
800,000 rows of data that need to be split up by a category column and
populated into an excel workbook for each category. There are 2700
categories and about 300 rows per category. To simplify the automation, I
created a macro in the template which is called before saving to do a few
things.
The solution is about 50 lines of J code
1. Open up the tab delimited file
2. Create boxed groups on the key - (0{"1 data) </. data
3. Call populate function for each boxed group
The populate function:
1. Copies the template to the category-specific file name
2. Populates the new file with the category-specific data
3. Runs Excel Macro
4. Saves the file
The excel population is done through the excellent tables/wdoo addon
All the code I wrote had some example either on NuVoc or in the tables/wdoo
addon that I was able to base it on. The J documentation / examples made
this much easier. I'm sure my nearly daily play with J helps too.
Thanks everyone
Joe
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