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freexl

brew install freexl v2.0.0 MPL-1.1 OR GPL-2.0-or-later OR LGPL-2.1-or-later

C library for reading and extracting data from Microsoft Excel .xls files.

Why you might care

FreeXL is a lightweight, dependency-minimal parser for legacy Excel binary formats (.xls). It's primarily used as a build/runtime dependency in geospatial and data processing tools (like GDAL/OGR) that need .xls support; for standalone use, consider Python libraries like openpyxl or xlrd, but FreeXL offers a C API for embedding in compiled applications.

Categories

Alternatives

libxlsxwriter xlrd openpyxl
2.5k
30-day installs · #872
7.4k
90-day · #928
29.6k
365-day · #889

Runtime dependencies

Build dependencies

Links

Blurb generated by claude-haiku-4-5 on 2mo ago.

Raw metadata
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  "desc": "Library to extract data from Excel .xls files",
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  "enrichment_fetched_at": "2026-06-20T23:37:49+00:00",
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  "license": "MPL-1.1 OR GPL-2.0-or-later OR LGPL-2.1-or-later",
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  "why_use_this": "FreeXL is a lightweight, dependency-minimal parser for legacy Excel binary formats (.xls). It\u0027s primarily used as a build/runtime dependency in geospatial and data processing tools (like GDAL/OGR) that need .xls support; for standalone use, consider Python libraries like openpyxl or xlrd, but FreeXL offers a C API for embedding in compiled applications."
}