About

Copying a column of data from a spreadsheet, database output, or log file produces newline-separated values. Most systems that accept bulk input - SQL IN clauses, API query parameters, configuration arrays - require those values as a single delimited string. Manually inserting commas between n items is error-prone: a missing separator breaks a query, a trailing comma throws a parse error, an unquoted string containing spaces corrupts CSV structure. This tool converts a vertical list of n lines into a single row joined by a configurable delimiter in O(n) time. It handles trimming, empty-line removal, optional quoting, and alphabetical sorting. The conversion is real-time and runs entirely in-browser with no server round-trip.

Limitation: this tool treats each line as one atomic value. If your source data contains embedded newlines within a single logical record (e.g., multi-line addresses), pre-clean the data first. Pro tip: when building SQL IN lists, enable the quote-wrap option and set the delimiter to , to produce syntactically valid output like "val1", "val2", "val3".

Formulas

The conversion follows a deterministic pipeline applied to the raw input string S:

S → split(S, \n) → lines[0..n]

Each line lines[i] is processed through optional transformations:

lines[i] → trim(lines[i]) → filter(lines[i] ≠ "") → quote(lines[i], q)

The final output is produced by joining the processed array:

output = join(lines, d)

Where d is the chosen delimiter string, q is the optional quote character (', ", or `), and n is the total number of non-empty lines after filtering. The reverse operation (comma to column) applies split(S, d) followed by join(lines, \n).

Reference Data

Delimiter Name	Character	Common Use Case	Escape Needed In
Comma	,	CSV files, SQL IN clauses, function arguments	CSV (if value contains comma)
Comma + Space	,	Human-readable lists, code arrays	CSV parsers
Semicolon	;	European CSV, SQL batch statements	URL query strings
Tab	\t	TSV files, spreadsheet paste	JSON strings
Pipe	\|	Unix pipelines, log formats, flat-file databases	Regular expressions
Space		Shell arguments, space-delimited configs	Values containing spaces
Newline	\n	Line-based formats, file lists	Single-line fields
Colon	:	PATH variables, key-value pairs	URLs, timestamps
Hyphen	-	Slug generation, date formatting	Negative numbers
Ampersand	&	URL query parameters	HTML, XML
Plus	+	URL-encoded spaces, phone numbers	Regex quantifiers
Double Quote Wrap	"val"	JSON arrays, SQL strings	Nested quotes
Single Quote Wrap	"val"	SQL strings, Python lists	Apostrophes in values
Backtick Wrap	`val`	MySQL identifiers, Markdown code	Template literals

Frequently Asked Questions

The tool does not escape delimiter characters found within values. If your data contains commas and you use comma as a delimiter, the output will be ambiguous. In that case, enable the quote-wrap option to surround each value in quotes, which is the standard CSV escaping mechanism defined in RFC 4180.

The tool splits on all three common newline conventions: Unix LF (\n), Windows CRLF (\r\n), and legacy Mac CR (\r). Mixed newline styles within the same input are handled correctly. Each occurrence produces a split boundary.

Yes. Use the Swap direction button (↔). It takes comma-separated (or any delimiter-separated) text in the output field and converts it back into a newline-separated column in the input field. The same delimiter and trim settings apply in reverse.

The default sort is lexicographic (alphabetical), which means "9" sorts after "10" because character code comparison is used. For purely numeric lists, the tool detects if all non-empty values are valid numbers and applies numeric ascending sort automatically. Mixed alphanumeric lists fall back to locale-aware string sorting via localeCompare().

The tool processes input synchronously in the main thread. For lists up to approximately 100,000 lines (roughly 2-3 MB of text), conversion completes in under 50ms on modern hardware. Beyond that, the browser tab may briefly freeze. There is no hard limit, but for files exceeding 5 MB, consider using a command-line tool like awk or sed.

Paste your column of IDs. Set the delimiter to comma+space. Enable single-quote wrapping. The output will be formatted as: "id1", "id2", "id3". Wrap the result in parentheses and prepend your SQL: SELECT * FROM table WHERE id IN (output). For numeric IDs, disable quote wrapping.