Custom delimiter to JSON array converter

This tool accepts any separator typed into the delimiter field, a comma, a double colon, a backslash, a string like ' -> ', and splits pasted text on exactly that separator, trims each value, and returns a formatted JSON array. It defaults to a comma when the field is left blank.

The conversion runs entirely in JavaScript in your browser. There is no request sent to a server, and no run limit, since nothing here costs anything to serve.

Every other converter in this family is fixed to one specific character, comma, tab, pipe, colon and the rest, because each matches a real, common export format. Real-world data does not always cooperate with those fixed choices. Some systems export something unusual: double colons, a pipe padded with spaces, an arrow built from dashes and a greater-than sign, or a control character represented as visible text.

This tool serves as the escape hatch for exactly that situation, and for the other common case: the data already contains one of the standard delimiters within its actual values, a comma inside an address, a pipe inside a note, requiring a rarer separator that the export was designed to use for that reason.

One additional field compared to the other converters, otherwise identical.

Step 1

Type the delimiter into the delimiter field, then paste the delimited text below it.

Step 2

Press Convert. The split and trim run instantly, client side, using exactly the delimiter entered.

Step 3

Copy the resulting JSON array from the output panel.

Whatever delimiter is chosen, this tool still performs a plain split with no quoting or escaping logic, precisely like every other converter in this family. If the exact string entered as the delimiter also appears legitimately inside one of the values, it is split there as well, with no mechanism to mark a particular occurrence as content rather than a boundary.

The only genuine fix is selecting a delimiter that never appears in the data. If the source export used a rare, multi-character sequence specifically to avoid this problem, entering that exact sequence rather than a single character produces the same correct result.

A single character is not always sufficient for safety. Certain export formats deliberately use a short, unusual sequence such as '::' or '~|~' as their separator, precisely because a two- or three-character sequence is less likely to occur by accident than any single character alone. This field accepts any text entered, one character or several, and treats it as a literal string to split on rather than a pattern carrying special meaning.

This means characters that would ordinarily carry special meaning in a search pattern, a period, an asterisk, a question mark, are treated as plain, literal characters here rather than interpreted otherwise.

No, not on its own. This tool has no concept of escaping or quoting, so it cannot distinguish a delimiter that is meant to separate two fields from the same character sequence appearing legitimately within one field's value.

The practical workaround is selecting a different delimiter, ideally one that genuinely does not appear anywhere in the actual data, and regenerating the source export with that separator where that is possible.

Developers working with a proprietary export format, one built by an internal tool or an older vendor system with its own separator convention, use it to get that data into JSON without writing a bespoke parser. Anyone whose data already contains commas, pipes or tabs within the actual values reaches for it once the fixed-delimiter tools have failed on that data.

It also functions as a general-purpose fallback: when the applicable converter isn't obvious, entering the exact character observed in the source text here produces the same result any of the dedicated tools would.