Valeport text file to Pandas pickle and Excel xlsx file

valeport.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
Created on Wed Oct 09 09:58:44 2013

Read text files for MiniCTD exported from Valeport Datalog Express Scroll 
Display, writes Excel xlsx and pickle file, creates pickle of main DataFrame
with another DataFrame as metadata attribute 

@author: James Morrison
"""

import pandas as pd
from pandas import ExcelWriter

def valeport_txt_to_pickle_excel(text_file):
    data_df = pd.read_csv(text_file, skiprows=9, delimiter='\t', index_col = 0, 
                parse_dates=True, usecols=[0,1,2,3,4,5,6], 
                names=['Date Time','Pressure (dBar)', 'Temperature (C)', 
                       'Conductivity (MicroSiemens/Centimetre)', 'Salinity (PSU)', 
                       'Density (KG/M3)', 'Sound Velocity (m/sec)'], 
                keep_date_col=False)
    metadata = open(text_file).readlines()[:9]
    metadata_dict = {}
    for line in metadata:
        metadata_dict[line.split(':', 1)[0]] = line.split(':', 1)[1][1:-1]
    metadata_df = pd.DataFrame(metadata_dict, index=[0])
    data_df.metadata = metadata_df
    data_df.to_pickle(text_file[:-4])
    writer = ExcelWriter(text_file[:-3] + 'xlsx')
    data_df.to_excel(writer, 'Data')
    data_df.metadata.to_excel(writer, 'Metadata')
    writer.save()