Reading an XLS (Excel) file. Row by row.

Howdy everyone,

I need to make a program that will read XLS files in this form: (rows seperated by a ';')
(first row)
Id student name;LockerNo;Combination;Teacher
(second row)
record1
(third row)
record2

and so on...

I need to be able to read a certain file to compare with an other (specifically to check for records that are in the first but not in the second).

Unfortunately I have absolutely no idea which libraries (if any exist) to use, could anyone suggest certain API to look through to get me started?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

What you describe looks like a CSV file, not like an XLS file (except that in CSVs, *columns* are separated by semi-colons, not *rows*).

The http://faq.javaranch.com/java/AccessingFileFormats page has links to lots of libraries that can read both CSV and XLS.