title: number of columns in xlwt worksheet
body: <p>I can't seem to find a way to return the value of the number of columns in a worksheet in xlwt.Workbook().  The idea is to take a wad of .xls files in a directory and combine them into one.  One problem I am having is changing the column position when writing the next file.  this is what i'm working with thus far:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import xlwt, xlrd, os
  
  def cbc(rd_sheet, wt_sheet, rlo=0, rhi=None,
  rshift=0, clo=0, chi=None, cshift = 0):
      if rhi is None: rhi = rd_sheet.nrows
      if chi is None: chi = 2#only first two cols needed
      for row_index in xrange(rlo, rhi):
          for col_index in xrange(clo, chi):
              cell = rd_sheet.cell(row_index, col_index)
              wt_sheet.write(row_index + rshift, col_index + cshift, cell.value)
  
  Dir = '/home/gerg/Desktop/ex_files'
  ext = '.xls'
  list_xls = [file for file in os.listdir(Dir) if file.endswith(ext)]
  files = [Dir + '/%s' % n for n in list_xls]
  output = '/home/gerg/Desktop/ex_files/copy_test.xls'
  wbook = xlwt.Workbook()
  wsheet = wbook.add_sheet('Summary', cell_overwrite_ok=True)#overwrite just for the repeated testing
  
  for XLS in files:
      rbook = xlrd.open_workbook(XLS)
      rsheet = rbook.sheet_by_index(0)
      cbc(rsheet, wsheet, cshift = 0)
  
  wbook.save(output)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>list_xls returns:</p>
  
  <pre><code>['file2.xls', 'file3.xls', 'file1.xls', 'copy_test.xls']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>files returns:</p>
  
  <pre><code>['/home/gerg/Desktop/ex_files/file2.xls', '/home/gerg/Desktop/ex_files/file3.xls', '/home/gerg/Desktop/ex_files/file1.xls', '/home/gerg/Desktop/ex_files/copy_test.xls']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My question is how to scoot each file written into xlwt.workbook over by 2 each time.  This code gives me the first file saved to <code>.../copy_test.xls</code>.  Is there a problem with the file listing as well? I have a feeling there may be.
  This is Python2.6 and I bounce between windows and linux.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you for your help,
  GM</p>