# Read an Arrow file or stream

Acquire / file

A variant of [Read a columnar file](https://meridian.online/operations/read-a-columnar-file).

Read Arrow IPC files, record-batch streams or Arrow datasets into a table.

Page: <https://meridian.online/operations/read-a-columnar-file/read-an-arrow-file-or-stream>

## Status

Not built yet.

arcform does not do this yet. [Its place on the roadmap](https://meridian.online/roadmap#read-a-columnar-file)

## What other tools call it

Meridian's classification; an independent blind rating agreed on 95.7% of 324 rows (variant, version 3).

- Apache DataFusion: [`Arrow`](https://datafusion.apache.org/user-guide/features.html) (read 2026-09-27)
- DuckDB: `arrow_scan` (read 2026-09-27)
- DuckDB: `arrow_scan_dumb` (read 2026-09-27)
- Apache Hop: [`Data stream input`](https://hop.apache.org/manual/latest/pipeline/transforms/data-stream-input.html) (read 2026-09-27)
- Polars: [`read_ipc`](https://docs.pola.rs/api/python/stable/reference/io.html) (read 2026-09-27)
- Polars: [`read_ipc_stream`](https://docs.pola.rs/api/python/stable/reference/io.html) (read 2026-09-27)
- Polars: [`scan_ipc`](https://docs.pola.rs/api/python/stable/reference/io.html) (read 2026-09-27)
- Polars: [`scan_pyarrow_dataset`](https://docs.pola.rs/api/python/stable/reference/io.html) (read 2026-09-27)
- Power Query M: [`Arrow.Document`](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powerquery-m/arrow-document) (read 2026-09-27)
- Power Query M: [`Arrow.FromBinary`](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powerquery-m/arrow-frombinary) (read 2026-09-27)
- VisiData: [`arrow (loader)`](https://github.com/saulpw/visidata/blob/7609212ec2febafa9caba7183cbebfaf49627909/visidata/loaders/arrow.py#L8) (read 2026-09-23)
- VisiData: [`arrows (loader)`](https://github.com/saulpw/visidata/blob/7609212ec2febafa9caba7183cbebfaf49627909/visidata/loaders/arrow.py#L14) (read 2026-09-23)