delimiter

n. determiner of limits or boundaries

A delimiter is a sequence of one or more characters used to specify the boundary between separate, independent regions in plain text or other data stream. An example of a delimiter is the comma character in a sequence of comma-separated values.An alternative to the use of field delimiters is declarative notation, which uses a length field at the start of a region to specify the boundary. For word delimiters used in the written form of human languages, see interword separation.
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v. demarcate, delimit, mark out, mark off, determine, circumscribe, peg out

1. A character used to indicate the beginning and end of a character string, i.e., a symbol stream, such as words, groups of words, or frames. 2. A flag that separates and organizes items of data.

<character> A character or string used to separate, or mark the start and end of, items of data in, e.g., a database, source code, or text file.
See also: record.
(2001-03-16)