Unexpected Increase in Memory Usage When Using Node.js Streams with Large Files
I've hit a wall trying to I'm getting frustrated with After trying multiple solutions online, I still can't figure this out. I'm facing an issue where my Node.js application experiences a significant increase in memory usage when processing large files using streams. I'm working with Node.js version 18.12.1 and utilizing the `fs` and `stream` modules for reading and transforming a CSV file. My goal is to read a large CSV file, transform its data, and then write the output to another file. However, I've noticed that when the file size exceeds 100MB, the memory consumption spikes dramatically, leading to performance degradation and eventual crashes. Here’s a snippet of my code: ```javascript const fs = require('fs'); const { Transform } = require('stream'); const inputFile = 'largeFile.csv'; const outputFile = 'transformedFile.csv'; const transformStream = new Transform({ transform(chunk, encoding, callback) { // Simulating a data transformation, e.g., converting to uppercase const transformed = chunk.toString().toUpperCase(); callback(null, transformed); } }); const readStream = fs.createReadStream(inputFile); const writeStream = fs.createWriteStream(outputFile); readStream.pipe(transformStream).pipe(writeStream); writeStream.on('finish', () => { console.log('File transformed successfully.'); }); ``` I've already tried using `highWaterMark` to limit the buffer size of the streams and have verified that the CSV file is not malformed. I’ve also looked into using `pipeline` from the `stream` module, but the memory issue persists. The application runs on a server with 8GB of RAM, and during processing, the memory usage climbs to nearly 6GB before crashing. I’m unsure if there's a more efficient way of handling such large files with streams in Node.js. Any suggestions on optimizing memory usage or alternative approaches would be greatly appreciated. I'm working on a service that needs to handle this. Am I missing something obvious? This is part of a larger service I'm building. Has anyone else encountered this? I'm working in a Windows 10 environment. I'm open to any suggestions. Cheers for any assistance!