# Skipping a lot of lines in CSV.read() allocates too much memory

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/skipping-a-lot-of-lines-in-csv-read-allocates-too-much-memory/110121>\
**Category:** Performance\
**Tags:** csv, io\
**Created:** [February 12, 2024, 9:52pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/skipping-a-lot-of-lines-in-csv-read-allocates-too-much-memory/110121 "2024-02-12T21:52:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 15

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![aris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@aris](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/aris)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2024, 4:02pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/skipping-a-lot-of-lines-in-csv-read-allocates-too-much-memory/110121/15 "2024-02-13T16:02:13Z")

</div>

The file I’m currently working with looks like this:

```julia
ITEM: TIMESTEP
0
ITEM: NUMBER OF ATOMS
2000
ITEM: BOX BOUNDS pp pp pp
-3.0000000000000000e+01 3.0000000000000000e+01
-3.0000000000000000e+01 3.0000000000000000e+01
-3.0000000000000000e+01 3.0000000000000000e+01
ITEM: ATOMS id type xs ys zs
1 1 0.239375 0.505765 0.143033
2 2 0.254461 0.510929 0.143544
3 2 0.240602 0.489869 0.142478
4 3 0.23796 0.503614 0.142924
5 1 0.595518 0.0928577 0.411568
6 2 0.583006 0.0833093 0.414176
.
.
.
1998 2 0.232469 0.378261 0.657207
1999 2 0.248144 0.373883 0.676491
2000 3 0.235467 0.369355 0.67263
ITEM: TIMESTEP
1
ITEM: NUMBER OF ATOMS
2000
ITEM: BOX BOUNDS pp pp pp
-3.0000000000000000e+01 3.0000000000000000e+01
-3.0000000000000000e+01 3.0000000000000000e+01
-3.0000000000000000e+01 3.0000000000000000e+01
ITEM: ATOMS id type xs ys zs
1 1 0.242619 0.507873 0.136935
2 2 0.253103 0.515054 0.14658
.
.
.

```

and then repeats itself like that.

Pretty ugly format in my opinion, but it is what it is.  
It comes from LAMMPS, a software for molecular dynamics simulations.

Anyhow, I don’t think we need to get into the specifics of my file format here, I just wanted to clarify whether I’m missing something in the CSV package.

---

_[View the full topic](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/skipping-a-lot-of-lines-in-csv-read-allocates-too-much-memory/110121)._