tokensplit 0.1.1

String-separated values with user-defined multi-character delimiters

TokenSplit — Token-Separated Values

A lightweight Python package for reading and writing .toks files: a plain-text tabular format where you choose your own multi-character delimiter string.

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Why?

CSV uses a single character (,) as a separator, which means commas in your data need escaping or quoting.
Toks lets you pick any string — /---/, :::, <<SEP>> — that you know won't appear in your data, keeping files simple and unambiguous without any escape sequences.

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File format

/---/
Alice/---/30/---/Engineer/---/
Bob/---/25/---/Designer/---/

• Line 1 — the delimiter string (written automatically by the writer)
• Every other line — values separated by the delimiter, with the line ending on <delimiter><newline>

Newlines inside a value are preserved because rows end only on the <delimiter><newline> sequence, not on bare newlines.

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Installation

pip install tokensplit           # once published to PyPI
# or, from source:
pip install .

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Quick start

Writing

import tokensplit

# Convenience function
tokensplit.write("people.toks", [
    ["name", "age", "role"],
    ["Alice", "30", "Engineer"],
    ["Bob",   "25", "Designer"],
], delimiter="/---/")

# Streaming writer — useful for large files
with open("people.toks", "w") as f:
    writer = tokensplit.ToksWriter(f, delimiter="/---/")
    writer.writerow(["name", "age", "role"])   # header
    writer.writerow(["Alice", "30", "Engineer"])
    writer.writerow(["Bob",   "25", "Designer"])

Reading

import tokensplit

# Convenience function — returns list of rows
rows = tokensplit.read("people.toks")
# [["name", "age", "role"], ["Alice", "30", "Engineer"], ...]

# Streaming reader — one row at a time (memory-efficient)
with open("people.toks") as f:
    reader = tokensplit.ToksReader(f)
    print("delimiter:", reader.delimiter)   # "/---/"
    for row in reader:
        print(row)

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Choosing a delimiter

Any non-empty string without a newline character works. Good choices:

Delimiter	Good when data contains…
/---/	General text
|||	Paths, URLs
<<<>>>	Code snippets
,,,,	Numeric CSVs being converted
:::	Short labels / IDs

Two rules enforced by the writer:

1. A value must not contain the delimiter string.
2. A value must not end with a prefix of the delimiter in a way that creates an ambiguous sequence when written (e.g. value "aa" with delimiter "aaa" would produce "aaaaa" which embeds an extra delimiter). A ValueError is raised in both cases.

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API reference

tokensplit.write(filepath, rows, delimiter)

Write rows (list of lists of strings) to filepath.

tokensplit.read(filepath) → List[List[str]]

Read all rows from filepath. Returns a list of lists of strings.

tokensplit.ToksWriter(file_obj, delimiter)

Streaming writer. Call .writerow(row) or .writerows(rows).
The delimiter is written to line 1 of the file on construction.

tokensplit.ToksReader(file_obj)

Streaming reader. Iterate with for row in reader.
.delimiter attribute exposes the delimiter read from line 1.

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Reading algorithm

The reader uses a forward-only sliding window of exactly len(delimiter) characters:

content:   h e l l o / - - - / w o r l d / - - - / \n
window:    [     5     ]
                  → slides one character at a time
                        match! → emit token, jump window past delimiter

• Time: O(n) — every character is visited once; one slice emitted per match
• Extra space: O(d) — only the current window lives in memory beyond the content string
• No regex, no str.split, no backtracking

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Running tests

python -m pytest tests/