Tilde to JSON array converter

This tool takes a line delimited with the tilde character, '~', and splits it on every tilde, trims each value, and returns a formatted JSON array. It addresses the same category of source as the caret converter: older, fixed-format exports that chose a character unlikely to appear inside ordinary field values.

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.

Certain legacy flat-file and EDI-adjacent formats required a field separator unlikely to occur inside a name, an amount or a code, the way a comma or a space so frequently does. The tilde was one character selected for that reason, rare enough in ordinary business text to serve as a deliberate, low-collision delimiter.

That choice persists in older systems, integrations and archived exports built on that assumption, even as modern formats have largely moved to comma-separated files or JSON.

No configuration, no format to declare in advance.

Step 1

Paste the tilde-delimited line into the input field.

Step 2

Press Convert. The split and trim run instantly, client side.

Step 3

Copy the resulting JSON array from the output panel.

The tilde is rarer than a comma or a space in ordinary prose, but not universally. On Unix or Linux systems, '~' is shorthand for a home directory, so a shell path such as '~/Documents/report.txt' carries one. In casual writing, a tilde preceding a number, '~10 items', signals an approximation. In a package.json file, an npm version range such as '~1.2.3' uses one to indicate a compatible minor version.

Pasting a line that mixes genuinely delimited fields with any of these, a file path, an approximate figure, a version string, causes the internal tilde to be split apart alongside the real field boundaries.

A tilde is a fully visible, ordinary keyboard character, unlike a zero-width space or a non-breaking space. Its usefulness as a delimiter comes not from being hidden but from being uncommon in the specific kind of data typically exported, names, amounts, codes, dates. The moment that data includes a shell path, a version string or an approximation, the assumption of rarity no longer holds.

This is the same constraint the caret converter operates under, and every rare-character delimiter in this family: the choice works precisely because the data was expected to be ordinary business content rather than technical text.

Not especially. Most modern exports and APIs have moved to comma-separated files, JSON or JSON lines. It survives chiefly in older systems, legacy integrations and archived exports that were never rebuilt.

A fresh export from a current system is unlikely to use a tilde delimiter. An older flat-file format or a legacy integration is a genuine possibility worth checking.

Developers and integration engineers working with an older system's flat-file export use it to get a single tilde-delimited row into JSON without building a dedicated parser for a legacy format that is otherwise rarely touched. Anyone migrating data out of an older EDI-adjacent or mainframe-connected system uses it to inspect a sample row before writing a proper import.

It also surfaces during data archaeology, opening an old export file to understand its structure before deciding what to do with the data it holds.