read_delimited

Parses an incoming bytes stream into events using a string as delimiter.

read_delimited separator:string|blob, [binary=bool, include_separator=bool]

Description

The read_delimited operator takes its input bytes and splits it using the provided string as a delimiter. This is useful for parsing data that uses simple string delimiters instead of regular expressions or standard newlines.

The resulting events have a single field called data.

Note

If the input ends with a separator, no additional empty event will be generated. For example, splitting "a|b|" with delimiter "|" will produce two events: "a" and "b", not three events with an empty third one.

separator: string|blob (required)

The string or blob to use as delimiter. The operator will split the input whenever this exact sequence is matched. When a blob literal is provided (e.g., b"\x00\x01"), the binary option defaults to true.

binary = bool (optional)

Treat the input as binary data instead of UTF-8 text. When enabled, invalid UTF-8 sequences will not cause warnings.

include_separator = bool (optional)

When enabled, includes the matched separator string in the output events. By default, the separator is excluded from the results.

Examples

Split on a simple delimiter

load_file "data.txt"
read_delimited "||"

Parse CSV-like data with custom delimiter

load_file "custom.csv"
read_delimited ";;;"

Include the separator in the output

load_file "data.txt"
read_delimited "||", include_separator=true

Parse binary data with blob delimiters

load_file "binary.dat"
read_delimited b"\x00\x01"

Use blob separator with include_separator

load_file "data.txt"
read_delimited b"||", include_separator=true

Parse binary data with string delimiters

load_file "binary.dat"
read_delimited "\x00\x01", binary=true

See Also

read_delimited_regex, read_lines, read_ssv, read_tsv, read_xsv