Paste a caret-delimited record from a legacy export and get back a clean JSON array. Runs entirely in your browser, no signup.
Caret to JSON array
Paste a line delimited with the caret character, '^', and this app splits it on every caret, trims each value, and returns a formatted JSON array. Same family of problem as the pipe and tilde converters: older, fixed-format exports that picked a rare character as their field separator.
It's local. The split runs in your browser, not on a server, so nothing you paste is uploaded and there's no limit on how many lines you convert.
Where the format comes from
Older mainframe extracts and some EDI-adjacent flat-file formats needed a delimiter that would essentially never appear inside a genuine field value, a name, an amount, a code. Commas, spaces and even pipes turned up too often for comfort, so some systems reached for something rarer, and the caret was one character that fit.
It was, and still is, a deliberate design choice, not an accident, meant to pick something unlikely to collide with anything a person would type into a normal field.
Workflow
Nothing to configure, no format to declare first.
Why it matters
The caret is rare in ordinary prose but not in technical text. Exponent notation writes '2^10' for two to the tenth power. Some programming languages use it for bitwise XOR. Terminal docs write '^C' for pressing Control and C together.
Paste a line that mixes genuinely delimited fields with any of these, a formula, a snippet, a keyboard instruction, and the caret inside gets split apart along with the real boundaries, the same mismatch every delimiter in this family runs into when the data contains the character it was chosen to avoid.
The underlying tradeoff
Picking a delimiter is a bet: this character won't show up inside real field values often enough to matter. For most business data, names, amounts, dates, codes, the caret was and is a safe bet, which is why it survives in exports built decades ago and still running today.
The bet only fails when the data itself is technical rather than ordinary business content, math notation, code and terminal shorthand being the main exceptions.
Straight answer
Less than it used to be, since most modern systems moved to comma-separated files, JSON or JSON lines. It persists mainly in older systems that haven't been rebuilt, some healthcare, insurance and financial back-office tools among them.
A fresh export from a modern system is unlikely to use it. A legacy integration or older flat-file format is a real possibility worth checking for.
Who it's for
Developers and integration engineers working with an older system's flat-file export use it to get a single caret-delimited row into JSON without building a full parser for a legacy format rarely touched otherwise. Anyone migrating data out of a mainframe-adjacent or EDI-style system uses it to inspect a sample row before writing a proper import script.
It also comes up in data archaeology, when someone finds an old export file and needs to understand its structure before deciding what to do with it.
What comes out
JSON.stringify never guesses at type here. A caret-delimited amount like '1500.00' converts to the string "1500.00", not the number 1500.00, quotation marks and all. That's true of every value in the array regardless of whether it looks numeric.
For most uses, feeding the array straight into code that already expects strings, this is exactly right. If a downstream system needs actual numbers, convert the numeric-looking entries after pasting the array out, since this tool doesn't infer type on its own.
Paste the line above and press Convert. Each caret-separated value becomes one array item.
Yes, no signup, no paste limit, no run limit. It runs entirely in your browser.
No, the split runs on your own device. Nothing is transmitted or stored.
A caret almost never appears in ordinary business data, names, amounts, dates, unlike a comma, which made it a safer delimiter for older export formats.
Yes, '2^10' is indistinguishable from a delimiter to this app and will be split there too.
It splits any caret-delimited text regardless of age, though caret delimiting is mostly found in older, legacy export formats now.
They're trimmed automatically, so any stray spacing around a value is removed.
The empty item between them is dropped rather than kept as a blank entry.
Yes, no length cap and no run limit.
Yes, the layout stacks on narrow screens.
Both target the same kind of legacy delimited export, chosen for rarity, but this splits on a caret and the other on a tilde. Use whichever your source file actually contains.
Yes, caret delimiting shows up in some legacy healthcare and insurance back-office formats. Paste a sample row to check the structure.
Not yet, paste, convert, copy for now.
No, a caret used as a bitwise XOR operator gets treated the same as a delimiter and split apart, which breaks the snippet.
The output is always syntactically valid JSON. It can't tell you whether the split matched your data's intent.
Yes, that caret's treated the same as any other, so pasted documentation with keyboard shortcuts written this way gets split apart.
Open the raw file in a plain text editor and look for a caret appearing at regular intervals between values.
Yes, nothing is transmitted anywhere. Processing happens locally in your browser.
The app treats the whole paste as one sequence, so multiple rows produce one combined array. Convert one row at a time for cleaner results.
This one's fixed to a caret. The custom delimiter tool accepts any separator you type, useful if your export uses a different rare character.
As a string, quotation marks included, the same as every other value. Convert it separately afterward if your code needs an actual number.
The empty item at that end is dropped, the same as an empty item between two carets in a row.