Was there a particular reason that this library was written? The only thing I can glean from the repo is that it seems to be faster than C# alternatives.
Somebody needed to read excel files from Rust, possibly not from Windows? That would also be the reason why openpyxl and xlrd exist for Python: http://www.python-excel.org
e.g. importable data using real spreadsheet files is much more reliable than CSV, and easier for clients to generate.
I had a project where I had to translate a frequently updated Excel workbook containing lots of complicated formulas into a PHP project. So I parsed each cell and transpiled the Excel stuff into PHP, and the ran the resulting code.
The reason was Excel’s lack of an API. The formulas themselves were too complicated for existing solutions, and kept breaking them. I only built what was necessary so it worked out quicker.
No idea if that’s the same as the original use case, but it this kind of library looks like it does the same kind of thing on a more general level.
The kind of API I was looking for but couldn’t find (in 2014) was “when I change the value of cell A1 to 17, what’s the value of cell C5?” And get the answer within a couple of seconds. There was no supported way to programmatically change the value of a cell and get the calculated result of a different cell, at least not that I could find.
