Delimiting
Explained
Data is often stored in fixed field format. For example, the First Name field may allow up to 20 characters. The first name "John" would be followed by 16 spaces to fill it out to the length of 20. This method causes all First Names, Address, Cities etc. to begin in a certain position within each record. An application using this data can "grab" the first 20 characters of the record as the "First Name" field, then grab the next character as the "Middle Initial" field, then 30 characters for the "Last Name" field and so on.
Delimiting is a means of file compression. Data stored in fixed length fields contains many spaces. Removing these spaces makes the file significantly smaller. Delimiting basically removes the trailing spaces from each field and replaces them with a delimiting character such as a comma, tab or pipe symbol. In order for the program reading in the delimited file to know where each new field begins a delimiting character is placed between fields. The delimiting character is normally meant to be a character that would not typically be part of the data within each field. When the application scans the file, it knows when it encounters the delimiting character that a new field has begun. Since commas are often part on the data (123 main St., Suite 100) quotes are often used to "encapsulate" each field ("123 Main St., Suite 100"). This way, the scanning application knows that the comma between the encapsulators is part of the data and not a new field beginning.
Any character can be used to delimit a file, however most applications which import delimited files look for commas, tabs or pipe characters.
We can delimit your file using any character
you request.
Comma-quote delimited:
"123 Main Street","My City","CA","99999"
Comma delimited:
123 Main Street,My City,CA,99999
Tab delimited: (* represents the tab character)
123 Main Street*My City*CA*99999
Pipe delimited:
123 Main Street|My City|CA|99999