Delims

Delims, short for delimiters, are markers used to denote boundaries between units of data, text, or syntax. They help parsers and processors recognize where one element ends and another begins, enabling reliable tokenization, parsing, and data extraction.

Delimiters can be a single character, such as a comma, tab, colon, or space, or a sequence of characters, such as double pipe (||) or an arrow (->). They may be fixed-length or variable-length, and many systems also use paired delimiters like parentheses, brackets, or quotation marks to enclose groups or literals.

In data formats, delimited files organize fields using a consistent separator. Common examples include comma-delimited (CSV), tab-delimited (TSV), and pipe-delimited files. In programming and data processing, delimiters appear in tokenization, where input is split into meaningful units, and in string literals, where quotes mark the start and end of a value. Many languages allow multiple delimiters or use regular expressions to define complex delimiting rules.

Practical considerations include handling delimiters that appear inside data fields, which may require escaping or quoting. Choosing delimiters that minimize conflicts, supporting proper encoding (including Unicode), and using robust parsers are important for reliable data interchange and processing. Real-world examples include CSV escaping via quoted fields and doubled quotes, and shell or scripting contexts where whitespace or specific characters act as field separators.

See also: delimiters, tokenization, lexical analysis, CSV, IFS, string splitting.