CSV Repair Kit

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CSV Delimiter Detector

Tell comma, semicolon, tab, and pipe files apart with confidence.

Your files never leave your device.

Drop a CSV to detect its delimiter

CSV, TSV, or text. Processed locally — the file is never uploaded.

Try a sample:

Why delimiter detection exists

\u201cCSV\u201d is used for comma, semicolon, tab, and pipe files. A single-column import is usually the wrong delimiter, not a one-column table. European Excel, SAP dumps, and database exports disagree on the separator.

How scoring works

The detector parses a sample with each candidate delimiter, ignoring commas that sit inside quotes. It prefers the separator that produces several columns and a stable width across rows. The highlighted row is the winner.

Example

name;amount;currency
Dupont;12,50;EUR

Comma scoring sees two fields on the header and three on the data row. Semicolon scoring sees three and three, so semicolon wins.

Limitations

A file that truly has one column of free text cannot be distinguished from a failed split. Very short files (one row) have weak statistics.

FAQ

Why did Excel export semicolons?

When the OS locale uses a comma as the decimal separator, Excel’s CSV uses semicolons as the field separator.

What if two delimiters score closely?

Quoted commas inside a semicolon file can confuse a naive counter. This detector tokenizes quotes, but you should still inspect the sample row.

Is TSV a CSV?

Tab-separated values follow the same quoting rules with a different delimiter. This tool treats them as first-class files.

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