CSV provides fast, flexible reader & writer for delimited text files in various formats.

Reading:

• CSV.File reads delimited data and returns a CSV.File object, which allows dot-access to columns and iterating rows.
• CSV.read is similar to CSV.File but used when the input will be passed directly to a sink function such as a DataFrame.
• CSV.Rows reads delimited data and returns a CSV.Rows object, which allows "streaming" the data by iterating and thereby has a lower memory footprint than CSV.File.
• CSV.Chunks allows processing extremely large files in "batches" or "chunks".

Writing:

• CSV.write writes a Tables.jl interface input such as a DataFrame to a csv file or an in-memory IOBuffer.
• CSV.RowWriter creates an iterator that produces csv-formatted strings for each row in the input table.

Here is an example of reading a csv file and passing the input to a DataFrame:

using CSV, DataFrames
ExampleInputDF = CSV.read("ExampleInputFile.csv", DataFrame)

Here is an example of writing out a DataFrame to a csv file:

using CSV, DataFrames
ExampleOutputDF = DataFrame(rand(10,10), :auto)
CSV.write("ExampleOutputFile.csv", ExampleOutputDF)

CSV.Chunks(source; ntasks::Integer=Threads.nthreads(), kwargs...) => CSV.Chunks

Returns a file "chunk" iterator. Accepts all the same inputs and keyword arguments as CSV.File, see those docs for explanations of each keyword argument.

The ntasks keyword argument specifies how many chunks a file should be split up into, defaulting to the # of threads available to Julia (i.e. JULIA_NUM_THREADS environment variable) or 8 if Julia is run single-threaded.

Each iteration of CSV.Chunks produces the next chunk of a file as a CSV.File. While initial file metadata detection is done only once (to determine # of columns, column names, etc), each iteration does independent type inference on columns. This is significant as different chunks may end up with different column types than previous chunks as new values are encountered in the file. Note that, as with CSV.File, types may be passed manually via the type or types keyword arguments.

This functionality is new and thus considered experimental; please open an issue if you run into any problems/bugs.

Arguments

File layout options:

• header=1: how column names should be determined; if given as an Integer, indicates the row to parse for column names; as an AbstractVector{<:Integer}, indicates a set of rows to be concatenated together as column names; Vector{Symbol} or Vector{String} give column names explicitly (should match # of columns in dataset); if a dataset doesn't have column names, either provide them as a Vector, or set header=0 or header=false and column names will be auto-generated (Column1, Column2, etc.). Note that if a row number header and comment or ignoreemptyrows are provided, the header row will be the first non-commented/non-empty row after the row number, meaning if the provided row number is a commented row, the header row will actually be the next non-commented row.
• normalizenames::Bool=false: whether column names should be "normalized" into valid Julia identifier symbols; useful when using the tbl.col1 getproperty syntax or iterating rows and accessing column values of a row via getproperty (e.g. row.col1)
• skipto::Integer: specifies the row where the data starts in the csv file; by default, the next row after the header row(s) is used. If header=0, then the 1st row is assumed to be the start of data; providing a skipto argument does not affect the header argument. Note that if a row number skipto and comment or ignoreemptyrows are provided, the data row will be the first non-commented/non-empty row after the row number, meaning if the provided row number is a commented row, the data row will actually be the next non-commented row.
• footerskip::Integer: number of rows at the end of a file to skip parsing. Do note that commented rows (see the comment keyword argument) do not count towards the row number provided for footerskip, they are completely ignored by the parser
• transpose::Bool: read a csv file "transposed", i.e. each column is parsed as a row
• comment::String: string that will cause rows that begin with it to be skipped while parsing. Note that if a row number header or skipto and comment are provided, the header/data row will be the first non-commented/non-empty row after the row number, meaning if the provided row number is a commented row, the header/data row will actually be the next non-commented row.
• ignoreemptyrows::Bool=true: whether empty rows in a file should be ignored (if false, each column will be assigned missing for that empty row)
• select: an AbstractVector of Integer, Symbol, String, or Bool, or a "selector" function of the form (i, name) -> keep::Bool; only columns in the collection or for which the selector function returns true will be parsed and accessible in the resulting CSV.File. Invalid values in select are ignored.
• drop: inverse of select; an AbstractVector of Integer, Symbol, String, or Bool, or a "drop" function of the form (i, name) -> drop::Bool; columns in the collection or for which the drop function returns true will ignored in the resulting CSV.File. Invalid values in drop are ignored.
• limit: an Integer to indicate a limited number of rows to parse in a csv file; use in combination with skipto to read a specific, contiguous chunk within a file; note for large files when multiple threads are used for parsing, the limit argument may not result in an exact # of rows parsed; use ntasks=1 to ensure an exact limit if necessary
• buffer_in_memory: a Bool, default false, which controls whether a Cmd, IO, or gzipped source will be read/decompressed in memory vs. using a temporary file.
• ntasks::Integer=Threads.nthreads(): [not applicable to CSV.Rows] for multithreaded parsed files, this controls the number of tasks spawned to read a file in concurrent chunks; defaults to the # of threads Julia was started with (i.e. JULIA_NUM_THREADS environment variable or julia -t N); setting ntasks=1 will avoid any calls to Threads.@spawn and just read the file serially on the main thread; a single thread will also be used for smaller files by default (< 5_000 cells)
• rows_to_check::Integer=30: [not applicable to CSV.Rows] a multithreaded parsed file will be split up into ntasks # of equal chunks; rows_to_check controls the # of rows are checked to ensure parsing correctly found valid rows; for certain files with very large quoted text fields, lines_to_check may need to be higher (10, 30, etc.) to ensure parsing correctly finds these rows
• source: [only applicable for vector of inputs to CSV.File] a Symbol, String, or Pair of Symbol or String to Vector. As a single Symbol or String, provides the column name that will be added to the parsed columns, the values of the column will be the input "name" (usually file name) of the input from whence the value was parsed. As a Pair, the 2nd part of the pair should be a Vector of values matching the length of the # of inputs, where each value will be used instead of the input name for that inputs values in the auto-added column.

Parsing options:

• missingstring: either a nothing, String, or Vector{String} to use as sentinel values that will be parsed as missing; if nothing is passed, no sentinel/missing values will be parsed; by default, missingstring="", which means only an empty field (two consecutive delimiters) is considered missing
• delim=',': a Char or String that indicates how columns are delimited in a file; if no argument is provided, parsing will try to detect the most consistent delimiter on the first 10 rows of the file
• ignorerepeated::Bool=false: whether repeated (consecutive/sequential) delimiters should be ignored while parsing; useful for fixed-width files with delimiter padding between cells
• quoted::Bool=true: whether parsing should check for quotechar at the start/end of cells
• quotechar='"', openquotechar, closequotechar: a Char (or different start and end characters) that indicate a quoted field which may contain textual delimiters or newline characters
• escapechar='"': the Char used to escape quote characters in a quoted field
• dateformat::Union{String, Dates.DateFormat, Nothing, AbstractDict}: a date format string to indicate how Date/DateTime columns are formatted for the entire file; if given as an AbstractDict, date format strings to indicate how the Date/DateTime columns corresponding to the keys are formatted. The Dict can map column index Int, or name Symbol or String to the format string for that column.
• decimal='.': a Char indicating how decimals are separated in floats, i.e. 3.14 uses '.', or 3,14 uses a comma ','
• groupmark=nothing: optionally specify a single-byte character denoting the number grouping mark, this allows parsing of numbers that have, e.g., thousand separators (1,000.00).
• truestrings, falsestrings: Vector{String}s that indicate how true or false values are represented; by default "true", "True", "TRUE", "T", "1" are used to detect true and "false", "False", "FALSE", "F", "0" are used to detect false; note that columns with only 1 and 0 values will default to Int64 column type unless explicitly requested to be Bool via types keyword argument
• stripwhitespace=false: if true, leading and trailing whitespace are stripped from string values, including column names

Column Type Options:

• types: a single Type, AbstractVector or AbstractDict of types, or a function of the form (i, name) -> Union{T, Nothing} to be used for column types; if a single Type is provided, all columns will be parsed with that single type; an AbstractDict can map column index Integer, or name Symbol or String to type for a column, i.e. Dict(1=>Float64) will set the first column as a Float64, Dict(:column1=>Float64) will set the column named column1 to Float64 and, Dict("column1"=>Float64) will set the column1 to Float64; if a Vector is provided, it must match the # of columns provided or detected in header. If a function is provided, it takes a column index and name as arguments, and should return the desired column type for the column, or nothing to signal the column's type should be detected while parsing.
• typemap::IdDict{Type, Type}: a mapping of a type that should be replaced in every instance with another type, i.e. Dict(Float64=>String) would change every detected Float64 column to be parsed as String; only "standard" types are allowed to be mapped to another type, i.e. Int64, Float64, Date, DateTime, Time, and Bool. If a column of one of those types is "detected", it will be mapped to the specified type.
• pool::Union{Bool, Real, AbstractVector, AbstractDict, Function, Tuple{Float64, Int}}=(0.2, 500): [not supported by CSV.Rows] controls whether columns will be built as PooledArray; if true, all columns detected as String will be pooled; alternatively, the proportion of unique values below which String columns should be pooled (meaning that if the # of unique strings in a column is under 25%, pool=0.25, it will be pooled). If provided as a Tuple{Float64, Int} like (0.2, 500), it represents the percent cardinality threshold as the 1st tuple element (0.2), and an upper limit for the # of unique values (500), under which the column will be pooled; this is the default (pool=(0.2, 500)). If an AbstractVector, each element should be Bool, Real, or Tuple{Float64, Int} and the # of elements should match the # of columns in the dataset; if an AbstractDict, a Bool, Real, or Tuple{Float64, Int} value can be provided for individual columns where the dict key is given as column index Integer, or column name as Symbol or String. If a function is provided, it should take a column index and name as 2 arguments, and return a Bool, Real, Tuple{Float64, Int}, or nothing for each column.
• downcast::Bool=false: controls whether columns detected as Int64 will be "downcast" to the smallest possible integer type like Int8, Int16, Int32, etc.
• stringtype=InlineStrings.InlineString: controls how detected string columns will ultimately be returned; default is InlineString, which stores string data in a fixed-size primitive type that helps avoid excessive heap memory usage; if a column has values longer than 32 bytes, it will default to String. If String is passed, all string columns will just be normal String values. If PosLenString is passed, string columns will be returned as PosLenStringVector, which is a special "lazy" AbstractVector that acts as a "view" into the original file data. This can lead to the most efficient parsing times, but note that the "view" nature of PosLenStringVector makes it read-only, so operations like push!, append!, or setindex! are not supported. It also keeps a reference to the entire input dataset source, so trying to modify or delete the underlying file, for example, may fail
• strict::Bool=false: whether invalid values should throw a parsing error or be replaced with missing
• silencewarnings::Bool=false: if strict=false, whether invalid value warnings should be silenced
• maxwarnings::Int=100: if more than maxwarnings number of warnings are printed while parsing, further warnings will be silenced by default; for multithreaded parsing, each parsing task will print up to maxwarnings
• debug::Bool=false: passing true will result in many informational prints while a dataset is parsed; can be useful when reporting issues or figuring out what is going on internally while a dataset is parsed
• validate::Bool=true: whether or not to validate that columns specified in the types, dateformat and pool keywords are actually found in the data. If false no validation is done, meaning no error will be thrown if types/dateformat/pool specify settings for columns not actually found in the data.

Iteration options:

• reusebuffer=false: [only supported by CSV.Rows] while iterating, whether a single row buffer should be allocated and reused on each iteration; only use if each row will be iterated once and not re-used (e.g. it's not safe to use this option if doing collect(CSV.Rows(file)) because only current iterated row is "valid")

Internal structure used to track information for a single column in a delimited file.

Fields:

• type: always a single, concrete type; no Union{T, Missing}; missingness is tracked in anymissing field; this field is mutable; it may start as one type and get "promoted" to another while parsing; two special types exist: NeedsTypeDetection, which specifies that we need to try and detect what type this column's values are and HardMissing which means the column type is definitely Missing and we don't need to detect anything; to get the "final type" of a column after parsing, call CSV.coltype(col), which takes into account anymissing
• anymissing: whether any missing values have been encountered while parsing; if a user provided a type like Union{Int, Missing}, we'll set this to true, or when missing values are encountered while parsing
• userprovidedtype: whether the column type was provided by the user or not; this affects whether we'll promote a column's type while parsing, or emit a warning/error depending on strict keyword arg
• willdrop: whether we'll drop this column from the final columnset; computed from select/drop keyword arguments; this will result in a column type of HardMissing while parsing, where an efficient parser is used to "skip" a field w/o allocating any parsed value
• pool: computed from pool keyword argument; true is 1.0, false is 0.0, everything else is Float64(pool); once computed, this field isn't mutated at all while parsing; it's used in type detection to determine whether a column will be pooled or not once a type is detected;
• columnspecificpool: if pool was provided via Vector or Dict by user, then true, other false; if false, then only string column types will attempt pooling
• column: the actual column vector to hold parsed values; field is typed as AbstractVector and while parsing, we do switches on col.type to assert the column type to make code concretely typed
• lock: in multithreaded parsing, we have a top-level set of Vector{Column}, then each threaded parsing task makes its own copy to parse its own chunk; when synchronizing column types/pooled refs, the task-local Column will lock(col.lock) to make changes to the parent Column; each task-local Column shares the same lock of the top-level Column
• position: for transposed reading, the current column position
• endposition: for transposed reading, the expected ending position for this column

CSV.File(input; kwargs...) => CSV.File

Read a UTF-8 CSV input and return a CSV.File object, which is like a lightweight table/dataframe, allowing dot-access to columns and iterating rows. Satisfies the Tables.jl interface, so can be passed to any valid sink, yet to avoid unnecessary copies of data, use CSV.read(input, sink; kwargs...) instead if the CSV.File intermediate object isn't needed.

The input argument can be one of:

• filename given as a string or FilePaths.jl type
• a Vector{UInt8} or SubArray{UInt8, 1, Vector{UInt8}} byte buffer
• a CodeUnits object, which wraps a String, like codeunits(str)
• a csv-formatted string can also be passed like IOBuffer(str)
• a Cmd or other IO
• a gzipped file (or gzipped data in any of the above), which will automatically be decompressed for parsing
• a Vector of any of the above, which will parse and vertically concatenate each source, returning a single, "long" CSV.File

To read a csv file from a url, use the Downloads.jl stdlib or HTTP.jl package, where the resulting downloaded tempfile or HTTP.Response body can be passed like:

using Downloads, CSV
f = CSV.File(Downloads.download(url))

# or

using HTTP, CSV
f = CSV.File(HTTP.get(url).body)

Opens the file or files and uses passed arguments to detect the number of columns and column types, unless column types are provided manually via the types keyword argument. Note that passing column types manually can slightly increase performance for each column type provided (column types can be given as a Vector for all columns, or specified per column via name or index in a Dict).

When a Vector of inputs is provided, the column names and types of each separate file/input must match to be vertically concatenated. Separate threads will be used to parse each input, which will each parse their input using just the single thread. The results of all threads are then vertically concatenated using ChainedVectors to lazily concatenate each thread's columns.

For text encodings other than UTF-8, load the StringEncodings.jl package and call e.g. CSV.File(open(read, input, enc"ISO-8859-1")).

The returned CSV.File object supports the Tables.jl interface and can iterate CSV.Rows. CSV.Row supports propertynames and getproperty to access individual row values. CSV.File also supports entire column access like a DataFrame via direct property access on the file object, like f = CSV.File(file); f.col1. Or by getindex access with column names, like f[:col1] or f["col1"]. The returned columns are AbstractArray subtypes, including: SentinelVector (for integers), regular Vector, PooledVector for pooled columns, MissingVector for columns of all missing values, PosLenStringVector when stringtype=PosLenString is passed, and ChainedVector will chain one of the previous array types together for data inputs that use multiple threads to parse (each thread parses a single "chain" of the input). Note that duplicate column names will be detected and adjusted to ensure uniqueness (duplicate column name a will become a_1). For example, one could iterate over a csv file with column names a, b, and c by doing:

for row in CSV.File(file)
    println("a=$(row.a), b=$(row.b), c=$(row.c)")
end

By supporting the Tables.jl interface, a CSV.File can also be a table input to any other table sink function. Like:

# materialize a csv file as a DataFrame, copying columns from CSV.File
df = CSV.File(file) |> DataFrame

# to avoid making a copy of parsed columns, use CSV.read
df = CSV.read(file, DataFrame)

# load a csv file directly into an sqlite database table
db = SQLite.DB()
tbl = CSV.File(file) |> SQLite.load!(db, "sqlite_table")

Arguments

File layout options:

• header=1: how column names should be determined; if given as an Integer, indicates the row to parse for column names; as an AbstractVector{<:Integer}, indicates a set of rows to be concatenated together as column names; Vector{Symbol} or Vector{String} give column names explicitly (should match # of columns in dataset); if a dataset doesn't have column names, either provide them as a Vector, or set header=0 or header=false and column names will be auto-generated (Column1, Column2, etc.). Note that if a row number header and comment or ignoreemptyrows are provided, the header row will be the first non-commented/non-empty row after the row number, meaning if the provided row number is a commented row, the header row will actually be the next non-commented row.
• normalizenames::Bool=false: whether column names should be "normalized" into valid Julia identifier symbols; useful when using the tbl.col1 getproperty syntax or iterating rows and accessing column values of a row via getproperty (e.g. row.col1)
• skipto::Integer: specifies the row where the data starts in the csv file; by default, the next row after the header row(s) is used. If header=0, then the 1st row is assumed to be the start of data; providing a skipto argument does not affect the header argument. Note that if a row number skipto and comment or ignoreemptyrows are provided, the data row will be the first non-commented/non-empty row after the row number, meaning if the provided row number is a commented row, the data row will actually be the next non-commented row.
• footerskip::Integer: number of rows at the end of a file to skip parsing. Do note that commented rows (see the comment keyword argument) do not count towards the row number provided for footerskip, they are completely ignored by the parser
• transpose::Bool: read a csv file "transposed", i.e. each column is parsed as a row
• comment::String: string that will cause rows that begin with it to be skipped while parsing. Note that if a row number header or skipto and comment are provided, the header/data row will be the first non-commented/non-empty row after the row number, meaning if the provided row number is a commented row, the header/data row will actually be the next non-commented row.
• ignoreemptyrows::Bool=true: whether empty rows in a file should be ignored (if false, each column will be assigned missing for that empty row)
• select: an AbstractVector of Integer, Symbol, String, or Bool, or a "selector" function of the form (i, name) -> keep::Bool; only columns in the collection or for which the selector function returns true will be parsed and accessible in the resulting CSV.File. Invalid values in select are ignored.
• drop: inverse of select; an AbstractVector of Integer, Symbol, String, or Bool, or a "drop" function of the form (i, name) -> drop::Bool; columns in the collection or for which the drop function returns true will ignored in the resulting CSV.File. Invalid values in drop are ignored.
• limit: an Integer to indicate a limited number of rows to parse in a csv file; use in combination with skipto to read a specific, contiguous chunk within a file; note for large files when multiple threads are used for parsing, the limit argument may not result in an exact # of rows parsed; use ntasks=1 to ensure an exact limit if necessary
• buffer_in_memory: a Bool, default false, which controls whether a Cmd, IO, or gzipped source will be read/decompressed in memory vs. using a temporary file.
• ntasks::Integer=Threads.nthreads(): [not applicable to CSV.Rows] for multithreaded parsed files, this controls the number of tasks spawned to read a file in concurrent chunks; defaults to the # of threads Julia was started with (i.e. JULIA_NUM_THREADS environment variable or julia -t N); setting ntasks=1 will avoid any calls to Threads.@spawn and just read the file serially on the main thread; a single thread will also be used for smaller files by default (< 5_000 cells)
• rows_to_check::Integer=30: [not applicable to CSV.Rows] a multithreaded parsed file will be split up into ntasks # of equal chunks; rows_to_check controls the # of rows are checked to ensure parsing correctly found valid rows; for certain files with very large quoted text fields, lines_to_check may need to be higher (10, 30, etc.) to ensure parsing correctly finds these rows
• source: [only applicable for vector of inputs to CSV.File] a Symbol, String, or Pair of Symbol or String to Vector. As a single Symbol or String, provides the column name that will be added to the parsed columns, the values of the column will be the input "name" (usually file name) of the input from whence the value was parsed. As a Pair, the 2nd part of the pair should be a Vector of values matching the length of the # of inputs, where each value will be used instead of the input name for that inputs values in the auto-added column.

Parsing options:

• missingstring: either a nothing, String, or Vector{String} to use as sentinel values that will be parsed as missing; if nothing is passed, no sentinel/missing values will be parsed; by default, missingstring="", which means only an empty field (two consecutive delimiters) is considered missing
• delim=',': a Char or String that indicates how columns are delimited in a file; if no argument is provided, parsing will try to detect the most consistent delimiter on the first 10 rows of the file
• ignorerepeated::Bool=false: whether repeated (consecutive/sequential) delimiters should be ignored while parsing; useful for fixed-width files with delimiter padding between cells
• quoted::Bool=true: whether parsing should check for quotechar at the start/end of cells
• quotechar='"', openquotechar, closequotechar: a Char (or different start and end characters) that indicate a quoted field which may contain textual delimiters or newline characters
• escapechar='"': the Char used to escape quote characters in a quoted field
• dateformat::Union{String, Dates.DateFormat, Nothing, AbstractDict}: a date format string to indicate how Date/DateTime columns are formatted for the entire file; if given as an AbstractDict, date format strings to indicate how the Date/DateTime columns corresponding to the keys are formatted. The Dict can map column index Int, or name Symbol or String to the format string for that column.
• decimal='.': a Char indicating how decimals are separated in floats, i.e. 3.14 uses '.', or 3,14 uses a comma ','
• groupmark=nothing: optionally specify a single-byte character denoting the number grouping mark, this allows parsing of numbers that have, e.g., thousand separators (1,000.00).
• truestrings, falsestrings: Vector{String}s that indicate how true or false values are represented; by default "true", "True", "TRUE", "T", "1" are used to detect true and "false", "False", "FALSE", "F", "0" are used to detect false; note that columns with only 1 and 0 values will default to Int64 column type unless explicitly requested to be Bool via types keyword argument
• stripwhitespace=false: if true, leading and trailing whitespace are stripped from string values, including column names

Column Type Options:

• types: a single Type, AbstractVector or AbstractDict of types, or a function of the form (i, name) -> Union{T, Nothing} to be used for column types; if a single Type is provided, all columns will be parsed with that single type; an AbstractDict can map column index Integer, or name Symbol or String to type for a column, i.e. Dict(1=>Float64) will set the first column as a Float64, Dict(:column1=>Float64) will set the column named column1 to Float64 and, Dict("column1"=>Float64) will set the column1 to Float64; if a Vector is provided, it must match the # of columns provided or detected in header. If a function is provided, it takes a column index and name as arguments, and should return the desired column type for the column, or nothing to signal the column's type should be detected while parsing.
• typemap::IdDict{Type, Type}: a mapping of a type that should be replaced in every instance with another type, i.e. Dict(Float64=>String) would change every detected Float64 column to be parsed as String; only "standard" types are allowed to be mapped to another type, i.e. Int64, Float64, Date, DateTime, Time, and Bool. If a column of one of those types is "detected", it will be mapped to the specified type.
• pool::Union{Bool, Real, AbstractVector, AbstractDict, Function, Tuple{Float64, Int}}=(0.2, 500): [not supported by CSV.Rows] controls whether columns will be built as PooledArray; if true, all columns detected as String will be pooled; alternatively, the proportion of unique values below which String columns should be pooled (meaning that if the # of unique strings in a column is under 25%, pool=0.25, it will be pooled). If provided as a Tuple{Float64, Int} like (0.2, 500), it represents the percent cardinality threshold as the 1st tuple element (0.2), and an upper limit for the # of unique values (500), under which the column will be pooled; this is the default (pool=(0.2, 500)). If an AbstractVector, each element should be Bool, Real, or Tuple{Float64, Int} and the # of elements should match the # of columns in the dataset; if an AbstractDict, a Bool, Real, or Tuple{Float64, Int} value can be provided for individual columns where the dict key is given as column index Integer, or column name as Symbol or String. If a function is provided, it should take a column index and name as 2 arguments, and return a Bool, Real, Tuple{Float64, Int}, or nothing for each column.
• downcast::Bool=false: controls whether columns detected as Int64 will be "downcast" to the smallest possible integer type like Int8, Int16, Int32, etc.
• stringtype=InlineStrings.InlineString: controls how detected string columns will ultimately be returned; default is InlineString, which stores string data in a fixed-size primitive type that helps avoid excessive heap memory usage; if a column has values longer than 32 bytes, it will default to String. If String is passed, all string columns will just be normal String values. If PosLenString is passed, string columns will be returned as PosLenStringVector, which is a special "lazy" AbstractVector that acts as a "view" into the original file data. This can lead to the most efficient parsing times, but note that the "view" nature of PosLenStringVector makes it read-only, so operations like push!, append!, or setindex! are not supported. It also keeps a reference to the entire input dataset source, so trying to modify or delete the underlying file, for example, may fail
• strict::Bool=false: whether invalid values should throw a parsing error or be replaced with missing
• silencewarnings::Bool=false: if strict=false, whether invalid value warnings should be silenced
• maxwarnings::Int=100: if more than maxwarnings number of warnings are printed while parsing, further warnings will be silenced by default; for multithreaded parsing, each parsing task will print up to maxwarnings
• debug::Bool=false: passing true will result in many informational prints while a dataset is parsed; can be useful when reporting issues or figuring out what is going on internally while a dataset is parsed
• validate::Bool=true: whether or not to validate that columns specified in the types, dateformat and pool keywords are actually found in the data. If false no validation is done, meaning no error will be thrown if types/dateformat/pool specify settings for columns not actually found in the data.

Iteration options:

• reusebuffer=false: [only supported by CSV.Rows] while iterating, whether a single row buffer should be allocated and reused on each iteration; only use if each row will be iterated once and not re-used (e.g. it's not safe to use this option if doing collect(CSV.Rows(file)) because only current iterated row is "valid")

CSV.RowWriter(table; kwargs...)

Creates an iterator that produces csv-formatted strings for each row in the input table.

Supported keyword arguments include:

• bufsize::Int=2^22: The length of the buffer to use when writing each csv-formatted row; default 4MB; if a row is larger than the bufsize an error is thrown
• delim::Union{Char, String}=',': a character or string to print out as the file's delimiter
• quotechar::Char='"': ascii character to use for quoting text fields that may contain delimiters or newlines
• openquotechar::Char: instead of quotechar, use openquotechar and closequotechar to support different starting and ending quote characters
• escapechar::Char='"': ascii character used to escape quote characters in a text field
• missingstring::String="": string to print for missing values
• dateformat=Dates.default_format(T): the date format string to use for printing out Date & DateTime columns
• header: pass a list of column names (Symbols or Strings) to use instead of the column names of the input table
• newline='\n': character or string to use to separate rows (lines in the csv file)
• quotestrings=false: whether to force all strings to be quoted or not
• decimal='.': character to use as the decimal point when writing floating point numbers
• transform=(col,val)->val: a function that is applied to every cell e.g. we can transform all nothing values to missing using (col, val) -> something(val, missing)
• bom=false: whether to write a UTF-8 BOM header (0xEF 0xBB 0xBF) or not

CSV.Rows(source; kwargs...) => CSV.Rows

Read a csv input returning a CSV.Rows object.

The input argument can be one of:

• filename given as a string or FilePaths.jl type
• a Vector{UInt8} or SubArray{UInt8, 1, Vector{UInt8}} byte buffer
• a CodeUnits object, which wraps a String, like codeunits(str)
• a csv-formatted string can also be passed like IOBuffer(str)
• a Cmd or other IO
• a gzipped file (or gzipped data in any of the above), which will automatically be decompressed for parsing

To read a csv file from a url, use the HTTP.jl package, where the HTTP.Response body can be passed like:

f = CSV.Rows(HTTP.get(url).body)

For other IO or Cmd inputs, you can pass them like: f = CSV.Rows(read(obj)).

While similar to CSV.File, CSV.Rows provides a slightly different interface, the tradeoffs including:

• Very minimal memory footprint; while iterating, only the current row values are buffered
• Only provides row access via iteration; to access columns, one can stream the rows into a table type
• Performs no type inference; each column/cell is essentially treated as Union{String, Missing}, users can utilize the performant Parsers.parse(T, str) to convert values to a more specific type if needed, or pass types upon construction using the type or types keyword arguments

Opens the file and uses passed arguments to detect the number of columns, ***but not*** column types (column types default to String unless otherwise manually provided). The returned CSV.Rows object supports the Tables.jl interface and can iterate rows. Each row object supports propertynames, getproperty, and getindex to access individual row values. Note that duplicate column names will be detected and adjusted to ensure uniqueness (duplicate column name a will become a_1). For example, one could iterate over a csv file with column names a, b, and c by doing:

for row in CSV.Rows(file)
    println("a=$(row.a), b=$(row.b), c=$(row.c)")
end

Arguments

File layout options:

• header=1: how column names should be determined; if given as an Integer, indicates the row to parse for column names; as an AbstractVector{<:Integer}, indicates a set of rows to be concatenated together as column names; Vector{Symbol} or Vector{String} give column names explicitly (should match # of columns in dataset); if a dataset doesn't have column names, either provide them as a Vector, or set header=0 or header=false and column names will be auto-generated (Column1, Column2, etc.). Note that if a row number header and comment or ignoreemptyrows are provided, the header row will be the first non-commented/non-empty row after the row number, meaning if the provided row number is a commented row, the header row will actually be the next non-commented row.
• normalizenames::Bool=false: whether column names should be "normalized" into valid Julia identifier symbols; useful when using the tbl.col1 getproperty syntax or iterating rows and accessing column values of a row via getproperty (e.g. row.col1)
• skipto::Integer: specifies the row where the data starts in the csv file; by default, the next row after the header row(s) is used. If header=0, then the 1st row is assumed to be the start of data; providing a skipto argument does not affect the header argument. Note that if a row number skipto and comment or ignoreemptyrows are provided, the data row will be the first non-commented/non-empty row after the row number, meaning if the provided row number is a commented row, the data row will actually be the next non-commented row.
• footerskip::Integer: number of rows at the end of a file to skip parsing. Do note that commented rows (see the comment keyword argument) do not count towards the row number provided for footerskip, they are completely ignored by the parser
• transpose::Bool: read a csv file "transposed", i.e. each column is parsed as a row
• comment::String: string that will cause rows that begin with it to be skipped while parsing. Note that if a row number header or skipto and comment are provided, the header/data row will be the first non-commented/non-empty row after the row number, meaning if the provided row number is a commented row, the header/data row will actually be the next non-commented row.
• ignoreemptyrows::Bool=true: whether empty rows in a file should be ignored (if false, each column will be assigned missing for that empty row)
• select: an AbstractVector of Integer, Symbol, String, or Bool, or a "selector" function of the form (i, name) -> keep::Bool; only columns in the collection or for which the selector function returns true will be parsed and accessible in the resulting CSV.File. Invalid values in select are ignored.
• drop: inverse of select; an AbstractVector of Integer, Symbol, String, or Bool, or a "drop" function of the form (i, name) -> drop::Bool; columns in the collection or for which the drop function returns true will ignored in the resulting CSV.File. Invalid values in drop are ignored.
• limit: an Integer to indicate a limited number of rows to parse in a csv file; use in combination with skipto to read a specific, contiguous chunk within a file; note for large files when multiple threads are used for parsing, the limit argument may not result in an exact # of rows parsed; use ntasks=1 to ensure an exact limit if necessary
• buffer_in_memory: a Bool, default false, which controls whether a Cmd, IO, or gzipped source will be read/decompressed in memory vs. using a temporary file.
• ntasks::Integer=Threads.nthreads(): [not applicable to CSV.Rows] for multithreaded parsed files, this controls the number of tasks spawned to read a file in concurrent chunks; defaults to the # of threads Julia was started with (i.e. JULIA_NUM_THREADS environment variable or julia -t N); setting ntasks=1 will avoid any calls to Threads.@spawn and just read the file serially on the main thread; a single thread will also be used for smaller files by default (< 5_000 cells)
• rows_to_check::Integer=30: [not applicable to CSV.Rows] a multithreaded parsed file will be split up into ntasks # of equal chunks; rows_to_check controls the # of rows are checked to ensure parsing correctly found valid rows; for certain files with very large quoted text fields, lines_to_check may need to be higher (10, 30, etc.) to ensure parsing correctly finds these rows
• source: [only applicable for vector of inputs to CSV.File] a Symbol, String, or Pair of Symbol or String to Vector. As a single Symbol or String, provides the column name that will be added to the parsed columns, the values of the column will be the input "name" (usually file name) of the input from whence the value was parsed. As a Pair, the 2nd part of the pair should be a Vector of values matching the length of the # of inputs, where each value will be used instead of the input name for that inputs values in the auto-added column.

Parsing options:

• missingstring: either a nothing, String, or Vector{String} to use as sentinel values that will be parsed as missing; if nothing is passed, no sentinel/missing values will be parsed; by default, missingstring="", which means only an empty field (two consecutive delimiters) is considered missing
• delim=',': a Char or String that indicates how columns are delimited in a file; if no argument is provided, parsing will try to detect the most consistent delimiter on the first 10 rows of the file
• ignorerepeated::Bool=false: whether repeated (consecutive/sequential) delimiters should be ignored while parsing; useful for fixed-width files with delimiter padding between cells
• quoted::Bool=true: whether parsing should check for quotechar at the start/end of cells
• quotechar='"', openquotechar, closequotechar: a Char (or different start and end characters) that indicate a quoted field which may contain textual delimiters or newline characters
• escapechar='"': the Char used to escape quote characters in a quoted field
• dateformat::Union{String, Dates.DateFormat, Nothing, AbstractDict}: a date format string to indicate how Date/DateTime columns are formatted for the entire file; if given as an AbstractDict, date format strings to indicate how the Date/DateTime columns corresponding to the keys are formatted. The Dict can map column index Int, or name Symbol or String to the format string for that column.
• decimal='.': a Char indicating how decimals are separated in floats, i.e. 3.14 uses '.', or 3,14 uses a comma ','
• groupmark=nothing: optionally specify a single-byte character denoting the number grouping mark, this allows parsing of numbers that have, e.g., thousand separators (1,000.00).
• truestrings, falsestrings: Vector{String}s that indicate how true or false values are represented; by default "true", "True", "TRUE", "T", "1" are used to detect true and "false", "False", "FALSE", "F", "0" are used to detect false; note that columns with only 1 and 0 values will default to Int64 column type unless explicitly requested to be Bool via types keyword argument
• stripwhitespace=false: if true, leading and trailing whitespace are stripped from string values, including column names

Column Type Options:

• types: a single Type, AbstractVector or AbstractDict of types, or a function of the form (i, name) -> Union{T, Nothing} to be used for column types; if a single Type is provided, all columns will be parsed with that single type; an AbstractDict can map column index Integer, or name Symbol or String to type for a column, i.e. Dict(1=>Float64) will set the first column as a Float64, Dict(:column1=>Float64) will set the column named column1 to Float64 and, Dict("column1"=>Float64) will set the column1 to Float64; if a Vector is provided, it must match the # of columns provided or detected in header. If a function is provided, it takes a column index and name as arguments, and should return the desired column type for the column, or nothing to signal the column's type should be detected while parsing.
• typemap::IdDict{Type, Type}: a mapping of a type that should be replaced in every instance with another type, i.e. Dict(Float64=>String) would change every detected Float64 column to be parsed as String; only "standard" types are allowed to be mapped to another type, i.e. Int64, Float64, Date, DateTime, Time, and Bool. If a column of one of those types is "detected", it will be mapped to the specified type.
• pool::Union{Bool, Real, AbstractVector, AbstractDict, Function, Tuple{Float64, Int}}=(0.2, 500): [not supported by CSV.Rows] controls whether columns will be built as PooledArray; if true, all columns detected as String will be pooled; alternatively, the proportion of unique values below which String columns should be pooled (meaning that if the # of unique strings in a column is under 25%, pool=0.25, it will be pooled). If provided as a Tuple{Float64, Int} like (0.2, 500), it represents the percent cardinality threshold as the 1st tuple element (0.2), and an upper limit for the # of unique values (500), under which the column will be pooled; this is the default (pool=(0.2, 500)). If an AbstractVector, each element should be Bool, Real, or Tuple{Float64, Int} and the # of elements should match the # of columns in the dataset; if an AbstractDict, a Bool, Real, or Tuple{Float64, Int} value can be provided for individual columns where the dict key is given as column index Integer, or column name as Symbol or String. If a function is provided, it should take a column index and name as 2 arguments, and return a Bool, Real, Tuple{Float64, Int}, or nothing for each column.
• downcast::Bool=false: controls whether columns detected as Int64 will be "downcast" to the smallest possible integer type like Int8, Int16, Int32, etc.
• stringtype=InlineStrings.InlineString: controls how detected string columns will ultimately be returned; default is InlineString, which stores string data in a fixed-size primitive type that helps avoid excessive heap memory usage; if a column has values longer than 32 bytes, it will default to String. If String is passed, all string columns will just be normal String values. If PosLenString is passed, string columns will be returned as PosLenStringVector, which is a special "lazy" AbstractVector that acts as a "view" into the original file data. This can lead to the most efficient parsing times, but note that the "view" nature of PosLenStringVector makes it read-only, so operations like push!, append!, or setindex! are not supported. It also keeps a reference to the entire input dataset source, so trying to modify or delete the underlying file, for example, may fail
• strict::Bool=false: whether invalid values should throw a parsing error or be replaced with missing
• silencewarnings::Bool=false: if strict=false, whether invalid value warnings should be silenced
• maxwarnings::Int=100: if more than maxwarnings number of warnings are printed while parsing, further warnings will be silenced by default; for multithreaded parsing, each parsing task will print up to maxwarnings
• debug::Bool=false: passing true will result in many informational prints while a dataset is parsed; can be useful when reporting issues or figuring out what is going on internally while a dataset is parsed
• validate::Bool=true: whether or not to validate that columns specified in the types, dateformat and pool keywords are actually found in the data. If false no validation is done, meaning no error will be thrown if types/dateformat/pool specify settings for columns not actually found in the data.

Iteration options:

• reusebuffer=false: [only supported by CSV.Rows] while iterating, whether a single row buffer should be allocated and reused on each iteration; only use if each row will be iterated once and not re-used (e.g. it's not safe to use this option if doing collect(CSV.Rows(file)) because only current iterated row is "valid")

checkvaliddelim(delim)

Checks whether a character or string is valid for use as a delimiter. If delim is nothing, it is assumed that the delimiter will be auto-selected. Throws an error if delim is invalid.

CSV.detect(str::String)

Use the same logic used by CSV.File to detect column types, to parse a value from a plain string. This can be useful in conjunction with the CSV.Rows type, which returns each cell of a file as a String. The order of types attempted is: Int, Float64, Date, DateTime, Bool, and if all fail, the input String is returned. No errors are thrown. For advanced usage, you can pass your own Parsers.Options type as a keyword argument option=ops for sentinel value detection.

isvaliddelim(delim)

Whether a character or string is valid for use as a delimiter.

CSV.read(source, sink::T; kwargs...) => T

Read and parses a delimited file or files, materializing directly using the sink function. Allows avoiding excessive copies of columns for certain sinks like DataFrame.

Example

julia> using CSV, DataFrames

julia> path = tempname();

julia> write(path, "a,b,c\n1,2,3");

julia> CSV.read(path, DataFrame)
1×3 DataFrame
 Row │ a      b      c
     │ Int64  Int64  Int64
─────┼─────────────────────
   1 │     1      2      3

julia> CSV.read(path, DataFrame; header=false)
2×3 DataFrame
 Row │ Column1  Column2  Column3
     │ String1  String1  String1
─────┼───────────────────────────
   1 │ a        b        c
   2 │ 1        2        3

Arguments

File layout options:

• header=1: how column names should be determined; if given as an Integer, indicates the row to parse for column names; as an AbstractVector{<:Integer}, indicates a set of rows to be concatenated together as column names; Vector{Symbol} or Vector{String} give column names explicitly (should match # of columns in dataset); if a dataset doesn't have column names, either provide them as a Vector, or set header=0 or header=false and column names will be auto-generated (Column1, Column2, etc.). Note that if a row number header and comment or ignoreemptyrows are provided, the header row will be the first non-commented/non-empty row after the row number, meaning if the provided row number is a commented row, the header row will actually be the next non-commented row.
• normalizenames::Bool=false: whether column names should be "normalized" into valid Julia identifier symbols; useful when using the tbl.col1 getproperty syntax or iterating rows and accessing column values of a row via getproperty (e.g. row.col1)
• skipto::Integer: specifies the row where the data starts in the csv file; by default, the next row after the header row(s) is used. If header=0, then the 1st row is assumed to be the start of data; providing a skipto argument does not affect the header argument. Note that if a row number skipto and comment or ignoreemptyrows are provided, the data row will be the first non-commented/non-empty row after the row number, meaning if the provided row number is a commented row, the data row will actually be the next non-commented row.
• footerskip::Integer: number of rows at the end of a file to skip parsing. Do note that commented rows (see the comment keyword argument) do not count towards the row number provided for footerskip, they are completely ignored by the parser
• transpose::Bool: read a csv file "transposed", i.e. each column is parsed as a row
• comment::String: string that will cause rows that begin with it to be skipped while parsing. Note that if a row number header or skipto and comment are provided, the header/data row will be the first non-commented/non-empty row after the row number, meaning if the provided row number is a commented row, the header/data row will actually be the next non-commented row.
• ignoreemptyrows::Bool=true: whether empty rows in a file should be ignored (if false, each column will be assigned missing for that empty row)
• select: an AbstractVector of Integer, Symbol, String, or Bool, or a "selector" function of the form (i, name) -> keep::Bool; only columns in the collection or for which the selector function returns true will be parsed and accessible in the resulting CSV.File. Invalid values in select are ignored.
• drop: inverse of select; an AbstractVector of Integer, Symbol, String, or Bool, or a "drop" function of the form (i, name) -> drop::Bool; columns in the collection or for which the drop function returns true will ignored in the resulting CSV.File. Invalid values in drop are ignored.
• limit: an Integer to indicate a limited number of rows to parse in a csv file; use in combination with skipto to read a specific, contiguous chunk within a file; note for large files when multiple threads are used for parsing, the limit argument may not result in an exact # of rows parsed; use ntasks=1 to ensure an exact limit if necessary
• buffer_in_memory: a Bool, default false, which controls whether a Cmd, IO, or gzipped source will be read/decompressed in memory vs. using a temporary file.
• ntasks::Integer=Threads.nthreads(): [not applicable to CSV.Rows] for multithreaded parsed files, this controls the number of tasks spawned to read a file in concurrent chunks; defaults to the # of threads Julia was started with (i.e. JULIA_NUM_THREADS environment variable or julia -t N); setting ntasks=1 will avoid any calls to Threads.@spawn and just read the file serially on the main thread; a single thread will also be used for smaller files by default (< 5_000 cells)
• rows_to_check::Integer=30: [not applicable to CSV.Rows] a multithreaded parsed file will be split up into ntasks # of equal chunks; rows_to_check controls the # of rows are checked to ensure parsing correctly found valid rows; for certain files with very large quoted text fields, lines_to_check may need to be higher (10, 30, etc.) to ensure parsing correctly finds these rows
• source: [only applicable for vector of inputs to CSV.File] a Symbol, String, or Pair of Symbol or String to Vector. As a single Symbol or String, provides the column name that will be added to the parsed columns, the values of the column will be the input "name" (usually file name) of the input from whence the value was parsed. As a Pair, the 2nd part of the pair should be a Vector of values matching the length of the # of inputs, where each value will be used instead of the input name for that inputs values in the auto-added column.

Parsing options:

• missingstring: either a nothing, String, or Vector{String} to use as sentinel values that will be parsed as missing; if nothing is passed, no sentinel/missing values will be parsed; by default, missingstring="", which means only an empty field (two consecutive delimiters) is considered missing
• delim=',': a Char or String that indicates how columns are delimited in a file; if no argument is provided, parsing will try to detect the most consistent delimiter on the first 10 rows of the file
• ignorerepeated::Bool=false: whether repeated (consecutive/sequential) delimiters should be ignored while parsing; useful for fixed-width files with delimiter padding between cells
• quoted::Bool=true: whether parsing should check for quotechar at the start/end of cells
• quotechar='"', openquotechar, closequotechar: a Char (or different start and end characters) that indicate a quoted field which may contain textual delimiters or newline characters
• escapechar='"': the Char used to escape quote characters in a quoted field
• dateformat::Union{String, Dates.DateFormat, Nothing, AbstractDict}: a date format string to indicate how Date/DateTime columns are formatted for the entire file; if given as an AbstractDict, date format strings to indicate how the Date/DateTime columns corresponding to the keys are formatted. The Dict can map column index Int, or name Symbol or String to the format string for that column.
• decimal='.': a Char indicating how decimals are separated in floats, i.e. 3.14 uses '.', or 3,14 uses a comma ','
• groupmark=nothing: optionally specify a single-byte character denoting the number grouping mark, this allows parsing of numbers that have, e.g., thousand separators (1,000.00).
• truestrings, falsestrings: Vector{String}s that indicate how true or false values are represented; by default "true", "True", "TRUE", "T", "1" are used to detect true and "false", "False", "FALSE", "F", "0" are used to detect false; note that columns with only 1 and 0 values will default to Int64 column type unless explicitly requested to be Bool via types keyword argument
• stripwhitespace=false: if true, leading and trailing whitespace are stripped from string values, including column names

Column Type Options:

• types: a single Type, AbstractVector or AbstractDict of types, or a function of the form (i, name) -> Union{T, Nothing} to be used for column types; if a single Type is provided, all columns will be parsed with that single type; an AbstractDict can map column index Integer, or name Symbol or String to type for a column, i.e. Dict(1=>Float64) will set the first column as a Float64, Dict(:column1=>Float64) will set the column named column1 to Float64 and, Dict("column1"=>Float64) will set the column1 to Float64; if a Vector is provided, it must match the # of columns provided or detected in header. If a function is provided, it takes a column index and name as arguments, and should return the desired column type for the column, or nothing to signal the column's type should be detected while parsing.
• typemap::IdDict{Type, Type}: a mapping of a type that should be replaced in every instance with another type, i.e. Dict(Float64=>String) would change every detected Float64 column to be parsed as String; only "standard" types are allowed to be mapped to another type, i.e. Int64, Float64, Date, DateTime, Time, and Bool. If a column of one of those types is "detected", it will be mapped to the specified type.
• pool::Union{Bool, Real, AbstractVector, AbstractDict, Function, Tuple{Float64, Int}}=(0.2, 500): [not supported by CSV.Rows] controls whether columns will be built as PooledArray; if true, all columns detected as String will be pooled; alternatively, the proportion of unique values below which String columns should be pooled (meaning that if the # of unique strings in a column is under 25%, pool=0.25, it will be pooled). If provided as a Tuple{Float64, Int} like (0.2, 500), it represents the percent cardinality threshold as the 1st tuple element (0.2), and an upper limit for the # of unique values (500), under which the column will be pooled; this is the default (pool=(0.2, 500)). If an AbstractVector, each element should be Bool, Real, or Tuple{Float64, Int} and the # of elements should match the # of columns in the dataset; if an AbstractDict, a Bool, Real, or Tuple{Float64, Int} value can be provided for individual columns where the dict key is given as column index Integer, or column name as Symbol or String. If a function is provided, it should take a column index and name as 2 arguments, and return a Bool, Real, Tuple{Float64, Int}, or nothing for each column.
• downcast::Bool=false: controls whether columns detected as Int64 will be "downcast" to the smallest possible integer type like Int8, Int16, Int32, etc.
• stringtype=InlineStrings.InlineString: controls how detected string columns will ultimately be returned; default is InlineString, which stores string data in a fixed-size primitive type that helps avoid excessive heap memory usage; if a column has values longer than 32 bytes, it will default to String. If String is passed, all string columns will just be normal String values. If PosLenString is passed, string columns will be returned as PosLenStringVector, which is a special "lazy" AbstractVector that acts as a "view" into the original file data. This can lead to the most efficient parsing times, but note that the "view" nature of PosLenStringVector makes it read-only, so operations like push!, append!, or setindex! are not supported. It also keeps a reference to the entire input dataset source, so trying to modify or delete the underlying file, for example, may fail
• strict::Bool=false: whether invalid values should throw a parsing error or be replaced with missing
• silencewarnings::Bool=false: if strict=false, whether invalid value warnings should be silenced
• maxwarnings::Int=100: if more than maxwarnings number of warnings are printed while parsing, further warnings will be silenced by default; for multithreaded parsing, each parsing task will print up to maxwarnings
• debug::Bool=false: passing true will result in many informational prints while a dataset is parsed; can be useful when reporting issues or figuring out what is going on internally while a dataset is parsed
• validate::Bool=true: whether or not to validate that columns specified in the types, dateformat and pool keywords are actually found in the data. If false no validation is done, meaning no error will be thrown if types/dateformat/pool specify settings for columns not actually found in the data.

Iteration options:

• reusebuffer=false: [only supported by CSV.Rows] while iterating, whether a single row buffer should be allocated and reused on each iteration; only use if each row will be iterated once and not re-used (e.g. it's not safe to use this option if doing collect(CSV.Rows(file)) because only current iterated row is "valid")

CSV.write(file, table; kwargs...) => file
table |> CSV.write(file; kwargs...) => file

Write a Tables.jl interface input to a csv file, given as an IO argument or String/FilePaths.jl type representing the file name to write to. Alternatively, CSV.RowWriter creates a row iterator, producing a csv-formatted string for each row in an input table.

Supported keyword arguments include:

• bufsize::Int=2^22: The length of the buffer to use when writing each csv-formatted row; default 4MB; if a row is larger than the bufsize an error is thrown
• delim::Union{Char, String}=',': a character or string to print out as the file's delimiter
• quotechar::Char='"': ascii character to use for quoting text fields that may contain delimiters or newlines
• openquotechar::Char: instead of quotechar, use openquotechar and closequotechar to support different starting and ending quote characters
• escapechar::Char='"': ascii character used to escape quote characters in a text field
• missingstring::String="": string to print for missing values
• dateformat=Dates.default_format(T): the date format string to use for printing out Date & DateTime columns
• append=false: whether to append writing to an existing file/IO, if true, it will not write column names by default
• compress=false: compress the written output using standard gzip compression (provided by the CodecZlib.jl package); note that a compression stream can always be provided as the first "file" argument to support other forms of compression; passing compress=true is just for convenience to avoid needing to manually setup a GzipCompressorStream
• writeheader=!append: whether to write an initial row of delimited column names, not written by default if appending
• header: pass a list of column names (Symbols or Strings) to use instead of the column names of the input table
• newline='\n': character or string to use to separate rows (lines in the csv file)
• quotestrings=false: whether to force all strings to be quoted or not
• decimal='.': character to use as the decimal point when writing floating point numbers
• transform=(col,val)->val: a function that is applied to every cell e.g. we can transform all nothing values to missing using (col, val) -> something(val, missing)
• bom=false: whether to write a UTF-8 BOM header (0xEF 0xBB 0xBF) or not
• partition::Bool=false: by passing true, the table argument is expected to implement Tables.partitions and the file argument can either be an indexable collection of IO, file Strings, or a single file String that will have an index appended to the name

Examples

using CSV, Tables, DataFrames

# write out a DataFrame to csv file
df = DataFrame(rand(10, 10), :auto)
CSV.write("data.csv", df)

# write a matrix to an in-memory IOBuffer
io = IOBuffer()
mat = rand(10, 10)
CSV.write(io, Tables.table(mat))