Tilde to JSON array
What the tilde to JSON array converter does
Paste a line delimited with the tilde character, '~', and this tool splits it on every tilde, trims each value, and returns a formatted JSON array. It is built for the same category of source as the caret converter: older, fixed-format exports that picked a character unlikely to appear inside ordinary field values.
It runs in your browser. Nothing you paste is uploaded, there is no signup, and there is no limit on how many lines you convert.
Where the format comes from
Why older exports settled on the tilde specifically
Some legacy flat-file and EDI-adjacent export formats needed a field separator that would not turn up inside a name, an amount or a code, the way a comma or a space so often does. The tilde was one of the characters chosen for that reason: rare enough in ordinary business text to be treated as a safe, deliberate delimiter rather than something a person would ever type into a data field by accident.
That choice still shows up today in older systems, integrations and archived exports built on that assumption, even though modern formats have mostly moved on to comma-separated files or JSON.
How it works
How to convert a tilde-delimited line to a JSON array in three steps
Nothing to configure, no format to declare first.
- Step 1
- Paste your tilde-delimited line into the input box.
- Step 2
- Press Convert. The split and trim happen instantly, locally.
- Step 3
- Copy the resulting JSON array from the output box.
Why it matters
Where a tilde legitimately shows up outside a delimited export
The tilde is rarer than a comma or a space in ordinary prose, but it is not rare everywhere. On a Unix or Linux system, '~' is shorthand for a user's home directory, so a shell path like '~/Documents/report.txt' contains one. In casual writing, a tilde in front of a number, '~10 items', means approximately. In a 'package.json' file, an npm version range like '~1.2.3' uses one to mean a compatible minor version.
Paste a line that mixes genuinely delimited fields with any of these, a file path, an approximate figure, a version string, and the tilde inside that content gets split apart along with the real field boundaries.
The underlying tradeoff
Why rarity, not invisibility, is what makes a delimiter work
A tilde is a perfectly visible, ordinary keyboard character, unlike a zero-width space or a non-breaking space. What makes it useful as a delimiter is not that it is hidden but that it is uncommon in the specific kind of data being exported, names, amounts, codes, dates. The moment that data includes a shell path, a version string or an approximation, the assumption of rarity stops holding.
This is the same underlying tension the caret converter deals with, and every rare-character delimiter in this family, the choice works precisely because the data was expected to be ordinary business content, not technical text.
Straight answer
Is tilde delimiting still common today?
Not especially, most modern exports and APIs have moved on to comma-separated files, JSON or JSON lines. It survives mainly in older systems, legacy integrations and archived exports that were never rebuilt.
If you are looking at a fresh export from a current system, a tilde delimiter would be unusual. If you are working with an older flat-file format or a legacy integration, it is worth checking for.
Who uses it
Who uses a tilde to JSON array converter, and when
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. 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 comes up during data archaeology, opening an old export file to figure out its structure before deciding what to do with the data inside it.