Download only a subset of a split

🤗Datasets
1

Hi,

I was wondering if is there a way to download only part of the data of a dataset.
In my specific case, I need to download only X samples from oscar English split (X~100K samples).
When I try to invoke the dataset builder it asks for >1TB of space so I think it will download the full set of data at the beginning.

2 Likes
2

Hello :hugs:

You can load a part of split by slicing:

train_10_20_ds = datasets.load_dataset('bookcorpus', split='train[10:20]')

You can refer to more ways of slicing and loading here.

5 Likes
3

Thank you, can I also use streaming mode to reach the same?

4

Hi, let me just complete this: split='train[10:20]' returns a slice of the data, but it still downloads everything.

If your dataset is too big, please use streaming mode. You can also slice your dataset in streaming mode, see the documentation here: Stream

3 Likes
5

Thank you, that’s the case indeed.

6

When I stream a dataset that’s too big, it always seems to get stuck after certain point (program hanging and not making progress), like after 10000 samples etc. After a long time it says something like reconnect to data host. Any reasons for that? Thanks!

7

It depends on the host. Some datasets are hosted on HF, but some others have their data files hosted on the original dataset author/platform. You can check how the dataset is loaded by checking its repository on HF. Which dataset did you try to load ?

8

same issue here

i just need 10-20 parquet from 67069567 all…

i zabnit diwnload tehm all

9

Datasets are now generally hosted on HF, you can pass the data_files= argument to load_dataset to only load a subset of the data in the datasets lib :slight_smile:

1 Like
10

thanks for the answer, but what if I want to just specify the number of files I want without actually listing their names, is it possible to do that? lets say I just want to download 20 data files without listing their names in data_files

Thanks in advance