Dotseparated

Dotseparated is an adjective and noun used to describe strings in which components are separated by dot characters (.). In computing and information organization, such strings are structured as a sequence of labels separated by dots, which implies a hierarchical or ordered relationship among the parts. Dotseparated strings are commonly used to denote identifiers, addresses, and names where a top-level component contains subcomponents.

Common contexts include domain names (example.com), IP addresses in IPv4 (192.0.2.1) where the four octets are separated by dots, and software version numbers (1.2.3) that convey major, minor, and patch information. Many programming languages represent hierarchical namespaces with dot separators, such as Java package names (java.util.List) or Python module paths (os.path). Some configuration formats and data serialization styles also employ dot-separated tokens.

In processing, dot-separated strings are typically split on literal dot characters. Care must be taken because in regular expressions the dot is a wildcard, so escaping is often required (e.g., splitting on \\.). Internationalized domain names may be represented in punycode when dot-separated labels include non-ASCII characters.

Variants and related terms include dot-delimited and dotted strings; dot-separated values is a broader phrase used in contexts like versioning and addressing. The concept contrasts with other separators such as slashes or colons and is widely used across networking, software development, and data organization.