Delimits

Delimits is the present tense form of the verb delimit, meaning to determine the boundaries or extent of something, or to mark off or separate one area, concept, or data segment from another. It is commonly used in contexts where limits, borders, or edges must be defined. The related noun delimitation refers to the act or process of delimiting, while delimiter (or delimiters in plural) denotes a mark or character that indicates a boundary or separates items.

Etymology traces the word to Latin roots through French and English, with delimit- deriving from the idea of marking a limit or boundary. The term has broad usage across disciplines, and is often paired with its noun forms to describe the act (delimitation) or the tools (delimiters) used to enforce boundaries.

In data and computing, delimiters are characters or strings that separate fields, tokens, or sections. Common examples include commas, tabs, and semicolons in data formats like CSV and TSV; quotation marks or brackets that delimit strings or code blocks; and various punctuation marks that mark sentence or clause boundaries. The verb delimits can describe the action of applying such boundaries, for example, “the parser delimits the input into separate records.”

In geography and international law, delimitation refers to the process of establishing the borders of a territory, often through treaty or negotiation. This is distinct from demarcation, which involves marking the actual boundary on the ground with physical signs or markers.

Delimitation is also used in linguistics and text processing to describe boundary definitions between units such as words, phrases, or morphemes, and in computing to describe the separation of data elements.