About

Data handling often involves transforming vertical lists into horizontal strings. Database administrators frequently need to convert a column of IDs from a spreadsheet into a comma-separated list for SQL IN clauses. Developers require formatted arrays for JSON or configuration files. Manual formatting is error-prone and slow. This tool automates the process by parsing line breaks and reconstructing the text based on specific delimiter rules.

Accuracy becomes critical when dealing with leading or trailing whitespace. Invisible spaces can break strict equality checks in code or database queries. This utility provides options to trim distinct lines before merging. It also supports encapsulating items in quotes or parentheses to match syntax requirements for various programming languages.

Formulas

The merging process can be defined as a transformation of a set of lines L into a single string S. Let x_i represent the i-th line in the input.

S = joinδn∪i=1wraptrimx_i

Where δ is the chosen delimiter (separator), and the wrapper function applies surrounding characters like quotes. The operation iterates through n lines, sanitizes the input, and concatenates the results.

Reference Data

Use Case	Separator	Wrapper	Result Pattern
SQL Query (IN Clause)	, (Comma)	' (Single Quote)	"ID1", "ID2", "ID3"
JSON Array	, (Comma)	" (Double Quote)	"Value1", "Value2"
CSV Row	, (Comma)	None	Data1, Data2, Data3
Search Regex (OR)	\| (Pipe)	None	Term1\|Term2\|Term3
Excel/Tabular	\t (Tab)	None	Col1 Col2 Col3
Python List	, (Comma)	' (Single Quote)	"A", "B", "C"
Shell Script Args	Space	" (Double Quote)	"Arg1" "Arg2"
PHP Array	, (Comma)	' (Single Quote)	"Key1", "Key2"

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. There is a specific toggle option to Deduplicate items. This is useful when processing raw logs or data dumps where redundancy is common but the final output requires unique values.

By default, the tool includes a filter to Ignore Empty Lines. If this is disabled, empty lines will appear as consecutive separators (e.g., ,,) in the output string.

The browser-based engine handles lists up to approximately 50,000 to 100,000 lines efficiently. Performance depends on the client machine's RAM. For lists exceeding 1 million lines, a server-side stream processor would be more appropriate.

Select "Custom" from the separator dropdown. An input field will appear where you can type any character or string sequence (such as " OR " for SQL logic) to use as the joiner.

The trim function removes standard ASCII whitespace (spaces, tabs) from the beginning and end of each line. It does not modify whitespace inside the text string itself.