Convert Pipe-Delimited Data to TSV or CSV

Pipe-Delimited Data Conversion

The pipe character (|) is a popular field delimiter in Unix systems, mainframe data exports, and some database tools. While less common than CSV, pipe-delimited files are valued because the pipe character rarely appears in natural text.

Example: Pipe-Delimited Input

UserID|Name|Email|Role
1001|Alice Johnson|alice@example.com|Admin
1002|Bob Smith|bob@example.com|Editor
1003|Carol, Williams|carol@example.com|Viewer

Converted to CSV

UserID,Name,Email,Role
1001,Alice Johnson,alice@example.com,Admin
1002,Bob Smith,bob@example.com,Editor
1003,"Carol, Williams",carol@example.com,Viewer

Setting the Pipe Delimiter

To work with pipe-delimited files:

1. Set the CSV Delimiter dropdown to Pipe (|)
2. Choose your conversion direction
3. The converter uses the pipe character for CSV-side parsing or generation

When Pipe Delimiter Is Useful

Pipe-delimited files are common in:

1. Database exports: Oracle SQL*Loader, PostgreSQL COPY, and MySQL data dumps
2. EDI (Electronic Data Interchange): Business-to-business data exchange formats
3. Log files: Application logs with structured fields
4. Legacy mainframe: COBOL and other mainframe data formats
5. Data pipelines: ETL processes that need a delimiter unlikely to appear in data

Quoting with Pipe Delimiter

When converting pipe-delimited data to CSV, fields that contain commas are automatically quoted. In the example above, "Carol, Williams" contains a comma, so it is wrapped in double quotes in the CSV output. The original pipe-delimited format did not need quoting because the name does not contain a pipe character.