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Text separator

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Young woman making an OK gesture at a neon desk demonstrating the text separator tool

Split or join strings using any delimiter. This free text separator needs no signup. Paste a comma list to get lines, or feed newlines to get joined text.

Mechanics of the text separator

You paste raw text and pick a delimiter. The tool scans the input for that exact character sequence, breaking the string at every match to yield an array of substrings. Then it reconstructs them using your target output format. This bidirectional flow handles both splitting a single block into many pieces and joining many pieces into one block, saving you from writing temporary scripts just to reformat a messy list.

Regular expressions power the boundary detection. You can use literal characters like a comma, a pipe, or a semicolon, or rely on escape sequences for newlines and tabs. The engine ignores empty matches by default to prevent massive arrays of blank strings when your input has trailing delimiters. You retain full control over how the parser treats whitespace around the boundaries.

  • Literal characters like commas or pipes.
  • Escape sequences for tabs and carriage returns.
  • Custom multi-character strings as boundaries.

When you need an online text separator

Developers use this constantly for quick data transformations. Imagine you have a list of email addresses separated by semicolons, but your script expects them as a newline-delimited file. You paste the blob, set the input to semicolon, and set the output to newline. It takes five seconds instead of writing a quick Python script, bridging the gap between messy clipboard data and strict command-line arguments.

Database administrators use it to format SQL IN clauses. You paste a hundred IDs separated by commas, and the tool splits them to join them with quotes and commas. You get a perfectly formatted list ready for your query. It also works in reverse when you need to extract values from a messy log file, while frontend developers rely on it to convert JSON arrays into readable documentation formats.

Limits and edge cases of the text separator

This tool operates entirely on exact character matches. It does not understand the semantic meaning of your data, meaning it will blindly break inside quoted strings if you split a CSV file by commas. You must clean your data first or use a dedicated CSV parser for complex structures. It treats every byte equally, which is incredibly fast but strictly literal.

Browser memory limits the maximum input size. You can process a few megabytes of text without issues, but pasting a massive log file will freeze your tab. The tool also does not deduplicate your output, so if your input contains duplicate values, they will appear in the final result exactly as many times as they occurred. You must pipe the result through a separate sorting utility if you need unique values.

  • Fails on nested structures like JSON or XML.
  • Breaks CSV fields containing the delimiter inside quotes.
  • Freezes the browser tab on inputs exceeding a few megabytes.

How to use the text separator

  1. Paste your raw text into the input area.
  2. Select the input delimiter from the dropdown menu.
  3. Choose the output delimiter for your final string.
  4. Toggle the trim whitespace option if your data has stray spaces.
  5. Click the convert button to generate the result.
  6. Copy the formatted text from the output box.

Delimiter reference guide

Common delimiters and their typical use cases in text processing and data transformation workflows.

DelimiterEscape SequenceCommon Use Case
Comma,CSV files, SQL IN clauses, email lists
Newline\nLog files, line-by-line scripts, bash loops
Tab\tTSV files, database exports, aligned columns
Pipe|Config files, custom data dumps, IRC logs
Semicolon;European CSV formats, SQL statement separators

Frequently asked questions

how to separate text by comma
Paste your raw text into the input box. Select comma as the input delimiter, then choose newline or your preferred character as the output delimiter. The tool splits the string at every comma and rebuilds it using your new boundary.
does the free text separator work on mobile
Yes. The interface is fully responsive and runs directly in your mobile browser. You can paste text, select delimiters, and copy the result just like on a desktop, though touch keyboards might make pasting large blocks slightly tedious.
why does my output have empty lines
Your input likely contains consecutive delimiters or trailing delimiters at the very end. The tool splits exactly at every match, so enable the trim empty values option to filter out blank substrings before the final join operation.
can I use a multi-character delimiter
Yes. You can type any string into the custom delimiter field. The engine will search for that exact sequence of characters and split the text wherever it finds a complete match.

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