docs/sql-data-sources-text.md

---
layout: global
title: Text Files
displayTitle: Text Files
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Spark SQL provides `spark.read().text("file_name")` to read a file or directory of text files into a Spark DataFrame, and `dataframe.write().text("path")` to write to a text file. When reading a text file, each line becomes each row that has string "value" column by default. The line separator can be changed as shown in the example below. The `option()` function can be used to customize the behavior of reading or writing, such as controlling behavior of the line separator, compression, and so on.

<div class="codetabs">

<div data-lang="python"  markdown="1">
{% include_example text_dataset python/sql/datasource.py %}
</div>

<div data-lang="scala"  markdown="1">
{% include_example text_dataset scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SQLDataSourceExample.scala %}
</div>

<div data-lang="java"  markdown="1">
{% include_example text_dataset java/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/JavaSQLDataSourceExample.java %}
</div>

</div>

## Data Source Option

Data source options of text can be set via:
* the `.option`/`.options` methods of
  *  `DataFrameReader`
  *  `DataFrameWriter`
  *  `DataStreamReader`
  *  `DataStreamWriter`
*  `OPTIONS` clause at [CREATE TABLE USING DATA_SOURCE](sql-ref-syntax-ddl-create-table-datasource.html)

<table>
  <thead><tr><th><b>Property Name</b></th><th><b>Default</b></th><th><b>Meaning</b></th><th><b>Scope</b></th></tr></thead>
  <tr>
    <td><code>wholetext</code></td>
    <td><code>false</code></td>
    <td>If true, read each file from input path(s) as a single row.</td>
    <td>read</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td><code>lineSep</code></td>
    <td><code>\r</code>, <code>\r\n</code>, <code>\n</code> (for reading), <code>\n</code> (for writing)</td>
    <td>Defines the line separator that should be used for reading or writing.</td>
    <td>read/write</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td><code>compression</code></td>
    <td>(none)</td>
    <td>Compression codec to use when saving to file. This can be one of the known case-insensitive shorten names (none, bzip2, gzip, lz4, snappy and deflate).</td>
    <td>write</td>
  </tr>
</table>
Other generic options can be found in <a href="https://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-data-sources-generic-options.html"> Generic File Source Options</a>.