Merged cells treated differently in .ods and .xls files

[pedrohasantiago]

I'm using the get_data() function from pyexcel_xls and pyexcel_odsr with .xls and .ods tables similar to this:

One	Two	Three	Four
One	Two and three		Four

pyexcel_xls.get_data() reads the table as follows, with an empty string in the second row:

[['One', 'Two', 'Three', 'Four']
['One', 'Two and three', '', 'Four']]

On the other hand, pyexcel_ods.get_data() reads the table as follows, with no empty string:

[['One', 'Two', 'Three', 'Four']
['One', 'Two and three', 'Four']]

ie, there is no way to acknowledge the existence of a merged cell in the second row.

Is there any way to make both libraries behave the same way?