The spelling of the word "delimiter" is often confused with "dilimiter." However, the correct pronunciation for "delimiter" is /dɪˈlɪmɪtər/ with the stress on the second syllable. The IPA phonetic transcription shows that the first syllable is pronounced with a short 'i' sound, and the letter 'e' in the second and third syllables is pronounced with a short schwa sound. The word "delimiter" refers to a character or symbol used to separate or distinguish data in a computer program, making it an essential part of coding and database management.
A delimiter is a character, symbol, or sequence that serves as a boundary or marker to separate or distinguish different elements or entities within a larger set or structure, particularly in the context of computer programming, data processing, and file systems.
In computer programming, a delimiter is commonly used to separate individual elements within a string, variable, or data structure. This allows the programmer or the computer system to recognize and extract specific sections of the data for further processing or manipulation. Delimiters can be single characters like commas, semicolons, or spaces, or they can be longer sequences of characters.
In data processing, delimiters are frequently employed to structure and organize data when storing or transmitting information. For instance, in a comma-separated values (CSV) file, a comma delimiter is used to separate different data values within each row. Similarly, in databases, delimiters play a crucial role in separating fields, records, or tables to facilitate efficient querying and retrieval of information.
In the realm of file systems, a delimiter is employed to define the hierarchy of directories and files. In most operating systems, a forward slash (/) is commonly used as a delimiter to separate directories within a file path, while a backslash (\) serves the same purpose in Windows-based systems.
Overall, delimiters are essential elements that aid in organizing and structuring various forms of data, enabling efficient processing, manipulation, and retrieval within the realm of computer programming, data processing, and file systems.
* The statistics data for these misspellings percentages are collected from over 15,411,110 spell check sessions on www.spellchecker.net from Jan 2010 - Jun 2012.
The word "delimiter" originated from the combination of the Latin word "de-" meaning "down" or "from" and the word "limiter" derived from "limit".
In the context of computer programming or data processing, a delimiter refers to a character or sequence of characters used to mark boundaries or separations between different parts of a text or data. Delimiters are commonly employed to separate values in a list, fields in a database, elements in a string, or items in a file.
The term "delimiter" emerged in the mid-20th century as a descriptive word for these specific characters or sequences that serve as delimiters, marking the beginning or end of a segment of data.