Program Usage Notes

Following are a few details of the operation of xtab.py when it is used as a command-line program.

Data summarization

The xtab program does not carry out any summarization or calculation on the data values, and therefore there should be no more than one data value to be placed in each cell of the output table. More than one value per cell is regarded as an error, and in such cases only one of the multiple values will be put in the cell.

Multiple data values

Multiple data values can be crosstabbed, as specified by multiple column names supplied with the -c argument.

Case sensitivity

Column names should be specified on the command line in the same case as they appear in the input file.

SQLite file

The -f option creates a temporary SQLite file in the same directory as the output file. This file has the same name as the input file, but an extension of ‘.sqlite’.

Number of rows and columns

There are no inherent limits to the number of rows or columns in the input or output files. Consequently, the output may exceed the limits of some spreadsheets or other software.

Missing arguments

Missing required arguments will result in an exception rather than an error message, whatever the error logging option. If no error logging option is specified, then if there are multiple values to be put in a cell (the most likely data error), a single message will be printed on the console. If an error logging option is specified, then the SQL for all individual cases where there are multiple values per cell will be logged. The occurrence of multiple values for a cell can also be seen in the output from the -q option.

Output format

The -d2, -d3, and -d4 options produce output in formats that are intended to facilitate visual examination, rather than automated processing by subsequent software.