Read a column file in julia

Question

I would not like to pickaxe a lot in the language just to read a file with numerical data arranged by columns. Is there an easy way to do this now in julia 1.1? Surprisingly this simple task is not on the manual. In python one would do something like this:

def read2col(filename, length):
    data = []
    for line in open(filename,'r'):
        for word in line.split():
            data.append(word)

data = np.reshape(data,(length,2))
data = np.asarray(data, dtype=np.float64)
return data

Answer 1

(untested)

function read2col(filename, len)
    asfloat64(s) = try x = parse(Float64, s); return x catch; return missing; end
    data = []
    for word in split(read(filename, String), r"\s+")
        push!(data, word)
    end
    data = reshape(data,(len, 2))
    data = asfloat64.(data)
    return data
end

or even

asfloat64(s) = try x = parse(Float64, s); return x catch; return missing; end
read2col(fname, len) = asfloat64.(reshape(split(read(fname, String), r"\s+"), (len, 2)))