Tilde to JSON array
What the tilde to JSON array converter does
Paste a line delimited with the tilde character, '~', and this app splits it on every tilde, trims each value, and returns a formatted JSON array. Same category of source as the caret converter: older, fixed-format exports that picked a character unlikely to appear inside ordinary field values.
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
Why older exports settled on the tilde specifically
Some legacy flat-file and EDI-adjacent formats needed a field separator that wouldn't turn up inside a name, an amount or a code, the way a comma or a space so often does. The tilde was one option chosen for that reason: rare enough in ordinary business text to work as a safe, deliberate delimiter.
That choice still shows up 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.
Workflow
How to convert a tilde-delimited line to JSON in three steps
Nothing to configure, no format to declare first.
- Step 1
- Paste your tilde-delimited line into the input field.
- Step 2
- Press Convert. The split and trim happen instantly, locally.
- Step 3
- Copy the JSON array from the output panel.
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 not everywhere. On Unix or Linux, '~' is shorthand for a home directory, so a shell path like '~/Documents/report.txt' carries 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 mixing genuinely delimited fields with any of these, a file path, an approximate figure, a version string, and the tilde inside gets split apart along with the real field boundaries.
The underlying tradeoff
Why rarity, not invisibility, makes a delimiter work
A tilde is a perfectly visible, ordinary keyboard character, unlike a zero-width space. What makes it useful as a delimiter isn't that it's hidden, it's that it's uncommon in the specific kind of data being exported, names, amounts, codes, dates. The moment the data includes a shell path, a version string or an approximation, that assumption stops holding.
It's the same 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.
A fresh export from a current system would be unusual to use it. An older flat-file format or a legacy integration is worth checking for it.
Who it's for
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 in data archaeology, opening an old export file to figure out its structure before deciding what to do with the data inside.
What comes out
An amount still comes back as a string, not a number
A tilde-delimited amount like '4200.00' converts to the string "4200.00", quotation marks and all, not the number 4200. JSON.stringify doesn't infer type here, so every value in the array is a string regardless of how numeric it looks.
That's a safer default for a legacy export specifically, since guessing at a number format risks getting decimal places or a locale-specific separator wrong. Convert the numeric-looking entries deliberately afterward, once you know the export's actual number formatting.