ENDDOCUMENT

ENDDOCUMENT is a token used in some computer systems to indicate the end of a document within a stream of text or data. In this usage, documents may be concatenated in a single file or transmitted as a sequence of records, and ENDDOCUMENT serves as an explicit terminator that allows a processor to switch from one document to the next or to stop reading.

ENDDOCUMENT is not a universally standardized command. It occurs in various domain-specific formats, including custom document serialization schemes, batch processing pipelines, or tooling that ingests multiple documents from a shared source. In line-oriented formats, ENDDOCUMENT is commonly placed on a line by itself to reduce ambiguity; in other designs it may appear as a field value or a specific delimiter within the markup or data syntax.

When implementing or parsing such a marker, considerations include: ensuring the marker is unlikely to occur as ordinary content, handling surrounding whitespace, and deciding whether to support escaping or alternate markers for embedded content. Parsers must also distinguish between an unexpected end of file and a missing end marker, and should define error handling or recovery procedures.

Examples of usage include a text file containing several documents, each followed by a line that reads ENDDOCUMENT, after which the next document begins, or a streaming protocol where ENDDOCUMENT signals the end of a document chunk before continuing.

See also: end-of-file, delimiter, end marker.