Reading large text files with Pandas

Question

I have been trying to read a few large text files (sizes around 1.4GB - 2GB) with Pandas, using the read_csv function, with no avail. Below are the versions I am using:

• Python 2.7.6
• Anaconda 1.9.2 (64-bit) (default, Nov 11 2013, 10:49:15) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)]
• IPython 1.1.0
• Pandas 0.13.1

I tried the following:

df = pd.read_csv(data.txt')

and it crashed Ipython with a message: Kernel died, restarting.

Then I tried using an iterator:

tp = pd.read_csv('data.txt', iterator = True, chunksize=1000)

again, I got the Kernel died, restarting error.

Any ideas? Or any other way to read big text files?

Thank you!

Solution

A solution for a similar question was given here some time after the posting of this question. Basically, it suggests to read the file in chunks by doing the following:

chunksize = 10 ** 6  # number of rows per chunk
for chunk in pd.read_csv(filename, chunksize=chunksize):
    process(chunk)

You should specify the chunksize parameter accordingly to your machine's capabilities (that is, make sure it can process the chunk).