Importing data from files

It can be very handy to get the data for the row entries from an external file. Actually, this can be done in a few lines.

How to do it...

We will load the datatool package, let it import data from a comma separated data file, sort it, and print it:

1. Store your data in the same folder as your main tex document. Here, we will use the data from the last recipes, unsorted within a text file:

   Distribution,Hits
   Zorin,85
   Debian,1582
   CentOS,1171
   elementary,899
   Arch,1040
   Mint,2364
   openSUSE,1334
   Ubuntu,1838
   Mageia,1219
   Fedora,1262

2. Start with a document class, such as article, and load the booktabs package for improved tabular layout, and the datatool package for data handling:

   \documentclass{article}
   \usepackage{booktabs}
   \usepackage{datatool}

3. With these datatool commands, load the data from the file and sort it:

   \DTLloaddb{Linux}{linux.csv}
   \DTLsort{Hits=descending}{Linux}

4. Start the document and set up a tabular environment:

   \begin{document}
   \begin{tabular}{rlr}
     & Distribution...