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Whitespace-Separated Values

container.array.whitespace_separated

List separated by spaces or tabs: value1 value2 value3. Example: "one two three" or "1 2 3 4 5".

Worked samples

DuckDB 1.5.5 · finetype 0.6.64

ValueAs VARCHARparts
apple banana cherryapple banana cherry['apple banana cherry']
1 2 3 4 51 2 3 4 5['1 2 3 4 5']
red green bluered green blue['red\tgreen\tblue']

Shape

Pattern
^[^\s]+(\s+[^\s]+)*$
ValueLengthShape
apple banana cherry19matches
1 2 3 4 59matches
red green blue14matches

Told apart

3 of the 3 other array types accept every one of these samples on shape alone.

Going the other way, this type's own rule accepts 3 of 3 samples of Comma-Separated Values (Simple), 2 of 2 samples of Pipe-Separated Values and 2 of 2 samples of Semicolon-Separated Values.

Background

Origin

FineType defines container.array.whitespace_separated itself, as a list separated by spaces or tabs, such as one two three or 1 2 3 4 5.[1] FineType's label definition notes that the whitespace separator is common in plain-text logs and Unix tools.[1]

POSIX awk gives the FS variable a default value of a single space.[2] When FS is a single space, POSIX awk skips leading and trailing blank and newline characters and delimits fields by sets of one or more blank or newline characters.[2]

XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes Second Edition was published as a W3C Recommendation on 28 October 2004.[3] XML Schema Part 2 defines the lexical space of a list datatype as a space-separated sequence of literals of the item type.[3] The HTML Standard defines a set of space-separated tokens as a string of zero or more tokens separated by one or more ASCII whitespace.[4] The HTML Standard allows a string holding a set of space-separated tokens to have leading or trailing ASCII whitespace.[4] The WHATWG Infra Standard defines ASCII whitespace as U+0009 TAB, U+000A LF, U+000C FF, U+000D CR, or U+0020 SPACE.[5] The HTML Standard requires the class attribute, when specified, to have a value that is a set of space-separated tokens.[6]

Use

The HTML Standard distinguishes an unordered set of unique space-separated tokens from an ordered set of unique space-separated tokens, in which the order of the tokens is meaningful.[4] XML Schema Part 2 gives the example of a list of strings whose three lines of text form a list of length 18, not 3, because list items are separated at space boundaries.[3]

Python's str.split, called with no separator, treats runs of consecutive whitespace as a single separator and returns no empty strings at the start or end for leading or trailing whitespace.[7] Python's documentation shows ' 1 2 3 '.split() returning ['1', '2', '3'].[7]

Sources

  1. [1]definitions_container.yamlFineType
  2. [2]awkstandard
  3. [3]XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes Second Editionstandard
  4. [4]HTML Standardstandard
  5. [5]Infra Standardstandard
  6. [6]HTML Standardstandard
  7. [7]Built-in Types — Python 3.15.0 documentationdocumentation

Detection notes

v1 migration: New for v2. Whitespace separator common in plain-text logs and Unix tools. Regex split on whitespace.

Use it

CLI · DuckDB
$ finetype infer -i "apple banana cherry" --mode column
→ container.array.whitespace_separated

SELECT ft_infer('apple banana cherry');
-- → 'container.array.whitespace_separated'
Cast expression
CAST({col} AS VARCHAR)

Schema

https://meridian.online/schemas/container.array.whitespace_separated · Frictionless type string

finetype taxonomy container.array.whitespace_separated -o json-schema

Aliases

space_separatedspace_list

Type Registry