The readcsv command only pads <https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/ab1f287906327941f401ed85f0fa6fd549b17bbf/base/datafmt.jl#L173> for the Any type and AbstractString type. The skipblanks option doesn't appear to help. If the file is as regular as you show, then parsing might not be so bad.
function readit(filename) # Just one way to get the number of lines. Needs unix. linecnt=int(match(r"\d+", readall(`wc -l z.txt`)).match) data=Array(Int, (4,linecnt)) open(filename) do fileio anint=r"\d+" idx=1 for line=eachline(fileio) m=matchall(anint, line) if m!=nothing data[1:length(m),idx]=map(int, m) idx+=1 end end end data end