Marker Delimited Text Extractor
Extract nonnested first-close marker-delimited content with source spans and an explicit unclosed marker offset.
Description
Extract nonnested first-close marker-delimited content with source spans and an explicit unclosed marker offset.
Literal start/end markers can delimit several nonoverlapping excerpts. Tracking an unclosed opener helps distinguish incomplete data from a clean end of input.
When to use this tool
Extract nonnested first-close marker-delimited content with source spans and an explicit unclosed marker offset.
- Prepare the supplied text, startMarker, endMarker fields for this operation.
- Compare the complete example with the representation used by your own input before carrying the result into another step.
How to use the tool and how it works
- Enter text, startMarker, endMarker. Use the exact text syntax, units and index conventions explained below.
- Run the tool. If input validation fails, correct the supplied fields before interpreting any result.
- Read result.extracted, result.unclosedStart. Interpret false, null and empty lists using the distinctions below; they can be valid outputs.
Find the next start marker, then the next end marker after it. Return interior start/end/text and continue after the closing marker; record unclosedStart when a final opener has no closer.1
| Input field | Meaning and representation | Accepted input |
|---|---|---|
| text | text. | Text; at most 8,192 UTF-16 code units, subject to the grammar above |
| startMarker | start marker. | Text; at most 8,192 UTF-16 code units, subject to the grammar above |
| endMarker | end marker. | Text; at most 8,192 UTF-16 code units, subject to the grammar above |
| Output field | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| result | Object containing the named outputs below. |
| result.extracted | The extracted list in the ordering and representation described above. |
| result.unclosedStart | Nullable unclosed start; the condition for absence is described above. |
{
"input": {
"text": "x[a]y[b]",
"startMarker": "[",
"endMarker": "]"
},
"output": {
"result": {
"extracted": [
{
"start": 2,
"end": 3,
"text": "a"
},
{
"start": 6,
"end": 7,
"text": "b"
}
],
"unclosedStart": null
}
}
}Limitations and assumptions
- Markers must be nonempty and are excluded from extracted text. Nesting and escapes are not interpreted; nested openers are treated as ordinary content before the first closer.
- Text offsets and lengths use UTF-16 code units unless explicitly described as bytes or code points. CRLF, CR and LF are recognized as line endings; a terminal newline creates a final empty line in the shared line model.
- Every declared top-level field is required and unexpected fields are rejected. Numeric inputs must be finite; ordinary text fields are bounded to 8,192 UTF-16 code units, with tighter operation-specific limits where stated.
- Ordinary string lists have at most 128 entries of at most 128 code units each; numeric lists and matrices have separate bounded size checks. Nonfinite results and excessively large serialized outputs are rejected.
- Indexes are zero-based and spans have an exclusive end unless explicitly stated otherwise. A valid false, null or empty-list result is distinct from malformed input.
Alternative or Complementary methods
Use a parser or language-aware editor when quoting, syntax or nested constructs matter. For plain text transforms, keep UTF-16 offsets, Unicode code points, grapheme clusters and UTF-8 byte offsets distinct; apply changes to the same source version used to calculate spans.
References
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