A delimiter is a sequence of one or more characters for specifying the boundary between separate, independent regions in plain text, mathematical expressions or other data streams.[1][2] An example of a delimiter is the comma character, which acts as a field delimiter in a sequence of comma-separated values. Another example of a delimiter is the time gap used to separate letters and words in the transmission of Morse code.[citation needed]
In mathematics, delimiters are often used to specify the scope of an operation, and can occur both as isolated symbols (e.g., colon in "") and as a pair of opposing-looking symbols (e.g., angled brackets in ).
Delimiters represent one of various means of specifying boundaries in a data stream. Declarative notation, for example, is an alternate method (without the use of delimiters) that uses a length field at the start of a data stream to specify the number of characters that the data stream contains.[3]
- ^ "Definition: delimiter". Federal Standard 1037C - Telecommunications: Glossary of Telecommunication Terms. Archived from the original on 2013-03-05. Retrieved 2019-11-25.
- ^ "What is a Delimiter?". www.computerhope.com. Retrieved 2020-08-09.
- ^ Rohl, Jeffrey S. (1973). Programming in Fortran. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-0555-8. describing the method in Hollerith notation under the Fortran programming language.