taking data from .xls file to python list
<p>Open the workbook</p>

<pre><code>import xlrd
wb = xlrd.open_workbook('/home/AlAhAb65/Desktop/Parameter.xls')
</code></pre>

<p>Check the sheet names</p>

<pre><code>wb.sheet_names()
</code></pre>

<p>Get the first sheet either by name</p>

<pre><code>sh = wb.sheet_by_name('QA_TEST')
l = []
</code></pre>

<p>Iterate through rows, returning each as a list that you can index:</p>

<pre><code>for rownum in range(sh.nrows):
    l.append(sh.row_values(rownum))
print l
</code></pre>

<p>When I am reading from excel to python list there always come ‘u’ before every data. How can I get rid of this? Is everything read as string? Do I have to convert every time?</p>
