hal_excel: Turn an Excel sheet into R: code that reads the data and...

In hal: Agentic Coding Assistants

Turn an Excel sheet into R: code that reads the data and recreates the formulas

Description

Reads an .xlsx, treats columns without formulas as data, and translates each formula column into a tidyverse expression via the active hal backend. Returns a runnable R script – a line that reads the input columns from the workbook plus a mutate() pipeline that recreates the formula columns – so you can replace the spreadsheet (and the hal_excel() call) with the code.

Usage

hal_excel(path, sheet = 1, model = NULL, tolerance = NULL, retries = NULL)

## S3 method for class 'hal_excel_code'
print(x, ...)

Arguments

path	Path to an .xlsx workbook.
sheet	Sheet name, or 1-based index (default 1).
model	Optional model id; defaults to the session/configured model.
tolerance	Numeric tolerance for float comparison (default hal.xl_tolerance, or 1e-9).
retries	Max self-correction attempts per column on mismatch (default hal.xl_retries, then hal.do_retries, then 2).
x	A hal_excel_code object (the generated R script).
...	Ignored.

Details

Works like hal_do() under the hood (disposable worker, code extraction, denylist, timed eval, retry loop), with one addition: each translation is run and checked against the values Excel cached, so only columns that match Excel row-for-row go into the live pipeline; the rest are emitted as commented stubs to review.

Each formula column is assumed to hold one formula filled down the column (a vectorised expression, e.g. ⁠=A2*B2⁠), so its first formula is translated once. A workbook with no cached values is still translated but reported unverifiable.

Value

A hal_excel_code object (a character string of R code) that prints as the generated script. The per-column report is attached as attr(result, "hal_excel"). Save it with writeLines(result, "out.R").

Examples

## Not run: 
hal_excel("model.xlsx")                # prints the read + mutate script
code <- hal_excel("model.xlsx")
writeLines(code, "model.R")         # or paste it in place of the call
attr(code, "hal_excel")               # per-column verification report

## End(Not run)

hal documentation built on Oct. 6, 2026, 5:07 p.m.