delimiter

[dih-lim-i-ter]

noun

Computers.

1. a blank space, comma, or other character or symbol that indicates the beginning or end of a character string, word, or data item.

Word History and Origins

Origin of delimiter¹

First recorded in 1960–65; delimit + -er ¹

Example Sentences

The conversation moves on to the Trapezium Cluster — the stellar nursery under Orion’s belt — and the delimiter, also known as the moon’s sunset line.

From New York Times

Wooten is an includer, not a delimiter; he’s better at holistic teaching than veiled polemic.

From Washington Post

It’s always been a delimiter, the digital divide.

From The Verge

It’s simply the marketing cap and sequential delimiter companies like Microsoft and Apple use to establish that this is what this thing does as opposed to that one.

From Time

Transcriber's Note: Italics in the text are indicated by the use of an underscore as delimiter, thusly.

From Project Gutenberg

When To Use

What is a delimiter?

A delimiter is a character or symbol used in computer code that separates words, data, or characters. Delimiters are used to mark the beginning or end of something.In code and many programming languages, many types of data or statements must be made using specific parameters and conditions in order to get the desired result. Every programming language is different, but most will employ several delimiters. For example, in a coding function meant to read the length of two sides and the height of two sides, each length and height will be delimited by a comma, as in 18, 20, 18, 20. This set might itself be surrounded by delimiters, such as (18, 20, 18, 20), so that the system running the program will understand where the data begins and ends.Most programming languages will establish their own conventions for how to write data and what delimiters are to be used. Some of the most common delimiters are semicolons (;), commas (,), asterisks (*), apostrophes (’), and quotation marks (“”). Example: Claudia instantly recognized the programming language because of its unusual delimiters.