huggingface / huggingface/datasets

Update items in the dataset without `map`

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#7,520 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
enhancement
Dominant language
Python
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Description

### Feature request

I would like to be able to update items in my dataset without affecting all rows. At least if there was a range option, I would be able to process those items, save the dataset, and then continue.

If I am supposed to split the dataset first, that is not clear, since the docs suggest that any of those functions returns a new object, so I don't think I can do that.

### Motivation

I am applying an extremely time-consuming function to each item in my `Dataset`. Unfortunately, datasets only supports updating values via `map`, so if my computer dies in the middle of this long-running process, I lose all progress. This is far from ideal. I would like to use `datasets` throughout this processing, but this limitation is now forcing me to write my own dataset format just to do this intermediary operation.

It would be less intuitive but I suppose I could split and then concatenate the dataset before saving? But this feels very inefficient.

### Your contribution

I can test the feature.

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