# Current solution for reading Fixed Width files (2024)

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/current-solution-for-reading-fixed-width-files-2024/118635>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** data\
**Created:** [August 26, 2024, 5:07pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/current-solution-for-reading-fixed-width-files-2024/118635 "2024-08-26T17:07:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dlakelan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/dlakelan/32/8491_2.png) [@dlakelan](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/dlakelan)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2024, 5:07pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/current-solution-for-reading-fixed-width-files-2024/118635/1 "2024-08-26T17:07:32Z")

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I’ve done the due diligence searching the forum for solutions to read fixed width files, but found mostly things from 2017, 2019, 2020… and referencing packages that don’t seem to exist anymore (FWF.jl). Julia has been moving pretty fast, that’s great. I’m hoping there’s some way to read fixed width files that works well today. I don’t see FWF.jl as a package available anymore? It’s not listed on juliahub at least. I see it’s on github last released in 2018 (pre julia 1.0?) I see there’s a FWFTables.jl package but it was last updated in 2020 and uses something called “blaise” files which I"m not familiar with.

I’m trying to read this data in the text format.

> **[County-to-County Migration Flows: 2016-2020 ACS](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/demo/geographic-mobility/county-to-county-migration-2016-2020.html)**
>
> These tables are based on the 2016-2020 ACS data.

I’m sure I can assume ASCII and read line at a time and split it by slices and strip padding etc by hand, but I figured maybe this is easier with an existing package and I hoped maybe it’s available somewhere?

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**Author:** ![rafael.guerra](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rafael.guerra/32/216610_2.png) [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2024, 5:11pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/current-solution-for-reading-fixed-width-files-2024/118635/2 "2024-08-26T17:11:09Z")

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> **[GitHub - JuliaAPlavin/FixedWidthTables.jl](https://github.com/JuliaAPlavin/FixedWidthTables.jl)**
>
> Contribute to JuliaAPlavin/FixedWidthTables.jl development by creating an account on GitHub.

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**Author:** ![dlakelan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/dlakelan/32/8491_2.png) [@dlakelan](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/dlakelan)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2024, 5:12pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/current-solution-for-reading-fixed-width-files-2024/118635/3 "2024-08-26T17:12:35Z")

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Love the Julia community! thank you!

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**Author:** ![TheCedarPrince](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/thecedarprince/32/17323_2.png) [@TheCedarPrince](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/TheCedarPrince)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2024, 5:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/current-solution-for-reading-fixed-width-files-2024/118635/4 "2024-08-26T17:37:22Z")

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Hey @00krishna, did you have a solution for this?