Table Manipulator

Download

Current Version: Table Manipulator V0.3

Requirements

  • Windows XP/2000/ME/98SE, Linux, Mac OS X (10.4 onwards)
  • Java 1.5

Description

The “Table Manipulator” project, is a small and lightweight tool that should allow people to easily manipulate their own data tables before being loaded in other programs such as SPSS, Excel, etc.

I found that whilst working with non-computer scientists, that I was being asked to manipulate data collected in experiments before these results were analyized. To help these users and other I decided to put together a simple and easy to use program that should allow them to carry out these manipulations on their own.

How to use

After you have downloaded the current version of Table Manipulator, double click the file. By double clicking this file Table Manipulator will start and present you with the main screen (see Figure 1).

Table Manipulator Figure 1
Figure 1: Image showing the main screen of Table Manipulator

The first step is to tell the program about the file you wish to manipulate. There are three pieces of information that the program needs to know, the first two are the location and name of the file that contains your data. Simply type in the full path and filename into the text box labeled as “Source Filename” or alternatively press the “Browse” button and select the file. The third piece of information that you need to specify is the column delimiter character. This is the character that indicates where one column end and another starts. Just pull down the box and select the appropriate value.

Next you need to tell what manipulations you wish to carry out and the particular order that they should be done in. Simple click the manipulation buttons (shown in Figure 2) and the manipulation will be added to the list on the right of the screen. If you wish to remove a manipulation from the list hightlight it(them) and then press the remove button; located below the list.

Manipulation Controls
Figure 2: Label A indicated the manipulation buttons, whilst label B shows the manipulation list.

Finally, you need to specify where the results of the manipulations should be placed. Again this requires three pieces of information. The first two are the location and filename of the output file, which can either be typed in by hand or selected by using the browse button. The third piece of information is the column delimiter value which should be used in the output file. If you wish to leave the column delimiter the same then make sure the “Replace column delimiter character” is unchecked (see Figure 3). If, however, you do wish to replace the delimiter characters, check this control and then select the character you wish to use from the drop down list.

Output Controls
Figure 3: Closeup of the controls that deal with specify what delimiter character to use on the output file.

That’s it, you are ready to go. Simply press “Proceed” and the program will do the rest for you.

Features

  • Currently can only load text based files
  • Current delimiters characters are comma, tab, space, colon
  • Can read and process both regular and irregular data files i.e. files which have rows of different lengths

Future Features

  • Ability to read and process Excel files
  • Ability to read and process SPSS files
  • Various different manipulations

FAQ

None at the moment. Yay!