Comma Separator
Paste a list, one item per line, and it comes back as a single line joined with a comma and a space, or with whatever separator you choose. Two things separate this from the pages that hold this search. The first is that the two jobs behind it are kept apart: Plain mode joins exactly what you typed, and CSV mode writes one row by the RFC 4180 rule, so an item holding a comma, a double quote or a line break is wrapped in double quotes and its own quotes are doubled instead of quietly breaking the file you paste it into. The second is that the blank-line policy is a control rather than a guess, so the empty row in the middle of a spreadsheet paste and the line break at the end of it are dropped or kept because you said so. Nothing is sorted or deduplicated, the spaces around your items stay unless you switch trimming on, there is no separator after the last item unless you ask for one, and the result copies to the clipboard or downloads as a .csv or .txt file.
Paste your list on the left, one item per line, and the joined line appears on the right. It is joined in this tab and nothing is uploaded.
How the list is read
Items are split on the character you choose, exactly as typed: nothing is trimmed, sorted or deduplicated on the way in. A blank item is an empty one or one holding only spaces, and the policy below decides what happens to it.
How it is joined
Plain joins the items exactly as they are. CSV writes one row by the RFC 4180 rule, so an item holding a comma, a double quote or a line break is wrapped in double quotes and its own quotes are doubled.
Worked examples
The list and the settings are remembered in this browser alone, so they are still here when you come back. Start over, above the tool, forgets them. A list longer than 20,000 characters is joined in full but is not written to storage. One pass joins up to 100,000 items and 1,000,000 characters of output.
Common questions
- How do I turn a list of lines into a comma separated line?
- Paste the list into the box on the left. It is read one item per line by default, and the joined line appears on the right as you type, with no button to press and no account to make. The separator strip decides what sits between the items: comma and space is the default, and comma, new line, space, tab, semicolon, vertical bar, none or anything you type yourself are all there too. Copy puts the whole line on your clipboard and Download writes it to a file.
- What is the difference between Plain mode and CSV mode?
- Plain mode joins the items exactly as you typed them and changes nothing inside any of them. CSV mode writes the items as one row of a CSV file by the RFC 4180 rule: a field is wrapped in double quotes when it contains the separator, a comma, a double quote, a carriage return or a line feed, and every double quote inside a wrapped field is written twice. So the two items Smith, John and Jane become "Smith, John",Jane, which a spreadsheet reads back as the two items you started with.
- What happens to an item that already contains a comma or a quote?
- In CSV mode it is quoted and escaped, which is the whole point of that mode: he said "yes" becomes "he said ""yes""". In Plain mode it is left exactly as typed, because that is what Plain mode promises, and the line under the output says how many items contain the separator or the quote character so you know the result is not something a parser will read back. Switching to CSV mode is the fix, and the message says so.
- What happens to blank lines in my list?
- You decide, and the tool says which setting is on rather than guessing. Drop blanks leaves out any item that is empty or holds only spaces, which is what you usually want for the empty row in the middle of a spreadsheet paste and for the line break at the end of it. Keep blanks counts each one as an empty item, which matters when the list is a column of a table and the empty cells have to stay in place. The same policy covers a run of separators, so red,,green is two items under Drop and three under Keep.
- Can I put quotes around every item for a query?
- Yes. Set the quote policy to Single or Double in Plain mode and each item is wrapped, so apple, banana and cherry become 'apple', 'banana', 'cherry'. Plain mode wraps and nothing more: it does not escape a quote that is already inside an item, and it tells you when one is there. CSV mode is the other choice: Double quotes every field under the RFC rule, and No quotes quotes only the fields that need it. A single-quote policy is refused in CSV mode, because RFC 4180 has no single-quoted field.
- Can I use a semicolon, a tab or a line break instead of a comma?
- Yes, on both sides. The input strip reads a list separated by new lines, commas, spaces or tabs, and Custom takes anything you type, including \n for a line break and \t for a tab. The output strip offers the same kind of choice, including None to run the items together. One detail is worth knowing in CSV mode: a field containing a comma is quoted whatever separator you picked, so a semicolon separated file stays readable by anything that expects a comma.
- Is there a separator after the last item?
- Not unless you ask for one, so there is no trailing comma to delete by hand. The items are joined rather than appended one at a time, so three items carry two separators and a hundred items carry ninety-nine, and the line ends on an item. Separator after the last item is a checkbox, off to start, and it adds exactly one. Trim the spaces around each item is the other checkbox, also off, so the joined line is exactly what you typed until you say otherwise.
- How long a list can it take?
- Up to 100,000 items and one million characters of output in one pass, on a paste of up to 2,000,000 characters. Those are memory limits rather than a plan, and they are enforced honestly: the length of the output is worked out from the encoded items before the line is built, so a list past the cap tells you how long the result would have been and how many of your items do fit. It never hands back a line that was cut short. Quoting counts toward the total, which is why CSV mode refuses a little sooner than Plain mode on the same list.
- Is my list uploaded anywhere?
- No. The split and the join both run in your browser, so there is no server in this and nothing is sent or logged. The list and the settings are remembered in this browser alone so they are still there when you come back, and the Start over button above the tool forgets them. A list longer than 20,000 characters is still joined in full, but it is not written to storage, so a very large paste is not kept after you close the tab.
- Why does the preview stop partway through a very long result?
- Only the drawing stops, never the result. Above 50,000 characters the preview shows the first 50,000 and the line beneath it says how long the whole thing is, because drawing a million characters on screen is what makes a page of this kind freeze. Copy and Download always give you every item.
Exact. In CSV mode the output follows RFC 4180: an item holding a comma, a quote or a line break is wrapped in double quotes and its own quotes are doubled. Plain mode joins exactly what you typed and adds no trailing separator unless you ask for one.