From: botp <botpena@...>
Date: 2011-10-06T14:23:44+09:00
Subject: Re: comparing elements in same array

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Thomas Le <metasmorph@gmail.com> wrote:
> I want to find (thousands of) duplicate names in the spreadsheet so I can
> compare the corrresponding files to see if they produce the same results ...

ok

> my logic is like this "if name in column A row 2 is same as that in colum A
> row 3, open files in column B row 2 and column B row 3,...do something else"

column A is already name column. files of the same pathname are the
same.  compare only if they have different pathnames.

you can try something like,

#---start code
require 'roo'

ORGFILE = 'organize.xlsx'
xcel = Excelx.new(ORGFILE)
xcel.default_sheet = xcel.sheets.first

startingRow = 2
nameProfile = Hash.new { |h, k| h[k] = [] }


startingRow.upto(xcel.last_row) do |row|

   name = xcel.cell(row,'A')
   location = xcel.cell(row,'B')

   nameProfile[name] << location

   startingRow += 1
end

nameProfile.delete_if{|k,v| v.unique.size>1}

#---end code

nameProfile should only contain hash of names with multiple pathnames

note, code above untested since i do not have your actual file.
try it in irb.

kind regards -botp