A
punctuation character or group of characters that separates two
names or two pieces of
data, or marks the beginning or end of a
programming construct. Delimiters are used in almost every
computer application. For example, in specifying
DOS pathnames, the
backslash () is the delimiter that separates
directories and
filenames. Other common delimiters include the comma (,), semicolon (;), quotes (“), and braces ({}).