Extract Text Between Delimiters guide
Collect non-overlapping text segments found between two literal boundary strings.
What this tool does
Extract Text Between Delimiters searches from left to right for a start delimiter followed by the next end delimiter. It collects the text between them, then resumes after that closing delimiter. Every match appears on its own output line. An option can retain both boundary strings around each result.
Delimiters can be one or several characters, such as square brackets, {{ and }}, XML-like markers, or plain phrases. Matching is literal and case-sensitive. An unmatched opening delimiter at the end is ignored because no complete segment exists. The tool reports the number of non-overlapping matches and lets you copy or download them.
This is not an HTML, XML, Markdown, programming-language, or nested-template parser. It always uses the next closing delimiter and does not balance nested pairs. If a delimiter can appear inside its own content, the extracted boundary may differ from what a structured parser would produce. Line breaks inside a matched segment are preserved, although joining several results with newlines can make their boundaries less obvious.
How to use it
- Paste the complete source text.
- Enter the exact start delimiter.
- Enter the exact end delimiter.
- Decide whether results should include their delimiters.
- Extract and review the count and output before copying or downloading.
For repeated template placeholders, use distinctive multi-character delimiters. For source code or markup with nesting, choose a parser designed for that language instead.
Delimiter extraction example
For the source Order [A-17], Order [B-42], enter [ as the start delimiter and ] as the end delimiter. The output contains A-17 and B-42 on separate lines. Enabling the delimiter option returns [A-17] and [B-42] instead. The tool reads complete pairs from left to right, so a final unmatched [ produces no extra result.
Use the Delimiter Replacer when every separator should change rather than when content between paired boundaries should be collected. Use the Column Extractor for quoted CSV, TSV, or other row-and-column data.
Benefits
- Supports literal multi-character delimiters
- Extracts multiple non-overlapping segments
- Can include or remove the boundary strings
- Ignores incomplete trailing pairs safely
- Produces copyable and downloadable plain text
- Performs all searching locally
Parsing limitations
The algorithm does not handle escaping, nesting, attributes, comments, or grammar rules. Always compare extracted values with the original when delimiters can occur inside content or when the source controls an automated workflow.