# CSV and Parsers PosLen Length Future Support

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/csv-and-parsers-poslen-length-future-support/88646>\
**Category:** Data\
**Created:** [October 13, 2022, 5:00am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/csv-and-parsers-poslen-length-future-support/88646 "2022-10-13T05:00:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kcqpo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a4c791/32.png) [@kcqpo](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kcqpo)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2022, 5:00am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/csv-and-parsers-poslen-length-future-support/88646/1 "2022-10-13T05:00:06Z")

</div>

PosLen function in Parsers only supports up to 64-bit values per cell right? I’m thinking of storing model parameters as string in a cell and this exceeds the length allowed in Parsers.jl. Is there going to be future support for larger lengths? I am currently manually editing the utils.jl code in Parsers.jl to extend up to 128-bits by increasing the bit shifts needed to access the length part of the storage array. I know that for specific applications, speed is important so 64-bits is necessary, but is there a way to implement an option?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![quinnj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/quinnj/32/11_2.png) [@quinnj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/quinnj)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2022, 5:13am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/csv-and-parsers-poslen-length-future-support/88646/2 "2022-10-13T05:13:09Z")

</div>

Yes, we’ll get better support eventually. I started working on it [here](https://github.com/JuliaData/Parsers.jl/pull/98). The tricky bit is figuring out the right user-facing interface in CSV.jl. It’s one of the issues I’d like to get figured out before we tag a 1.0 release.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kcqpo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a4c791/32.png) [@kcqpo](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kcqpo)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2022, 5:21am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/csv-and-parsers-poslen-length-future-support/88646/3 "2022-10-13T05:21:15Z")

</div>

Is it possible to add a nonessential keyword argument that specifies the size of the cells in the CSV.file function? I am not familiar with the software development in the Julia community, and I only started a few months ago. My apologies if this appears to be a dumb question.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![quinnj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/quinnj/32/11_2.png) [@quinnj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/quinnj)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2022, 5:33am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/csv-and-parsers-poslen-length-future-support/88646/4 "2022-10-13T05:33:39Z")

</div>

Yeah, we’ll probably end up doing something like that. It’s just currently quite complicated internally to switch between two different representations like this and keep it all fast and type stable. I think we’ll figure it out, but we’re also working on some other big internal refactorings, so it will just take some time to iron it all out.