CSV Parse Test

Using the Kaggle dataset for student records: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/muhammadroshaanriaz/students-performance-dataset-cleaned/data

The idea for this was to practice using Zig and learn how to use it in a sort of real scenario for parsing data.

The data is read, parsed to how I wanted it, then output in the terminal.

The output file is more compact reducing the size from ~550Kb -> ~320Kb.

Prerequisites

• Zig 0.14.1 (latest as of Sept 2025)
• CSV file (the one from Kaggle) -> students.csv

Example Output

true,3,1,false,false,44,51,48,143
false,4,2,true,true,86,85,91,262
false,4,3,true,false,85,92,85,262
false,0,5,false,false,50,67,73,190

This allows for a more optimized size which is better for when reading it and storing in a db or whatever a user would want.

Execution Time

I can run the program and it takes about 0.083 total seconds to run on my machine.

./main  0.03s user 0.06s system 98% cpu 0.083 total

Notes

The code needs some obvious improvements but this is mainly so I can learn and improve as I learn.

Changelog

• 2025-09-03: Updated code to work with the latest Zig version

Future Improvements

• Add a CLI interface to specify input and output files
• Improve memory management
• Compression on the ouput file