Word for delimiters which are placed after each item? [closed]

Question

The word "separator" can be used to describe delimiters which are placed between items. For instance, in this sequence:

"abbbabbbabbbabbba"

The 'b's separate the 'a's.

I'm looking for a word similar to "separator" which can be used to describe delimiters in this sequence:

"abbbabbbabbbabbbabbb"

The 'b's come after each 'a'.

Examples of this are periods after sentences and, in programming, semicolons after statements.

@WillHunting Separators go in-between, the word I'm looking for comes strictly after.

sehe · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-13 11:23:09Z

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I'd say

terminator (terminator token, terminator character, terminating punctuation etc.)
end marker (end of line, end of input, end of block, end of statement etc.)
trailer (trailing token, trailing character, trailing signature (below))

Somewhat more loosely, more appropriate to (binary) file formats, maybe:

edited Nov 13 '12 at 11:23

answered Nov 13 '12 at 11:17

sehe
473512

	The problem seems to be that these terms do not suggest the token may also go inside, e.g., terminator obviously occurs at the end -- that's it, whereas a delimiter occurs in the middle of a string, delimiting sub-strings. If we are thinking in terms of the sub-string alone, then it might work, which is not the case here. – Kris Nov 13 '12 at 12:54
	@Kris semantics :) That really depends on how you look at it. To me, it 'ends' a subsequence, so indeed it goes at the end. It's just not the end of the universe, at once. – sehe Nov 13 '12 at 15:00

Fortiter · Answer 2 · 2012-11-13 13:01:16Z

At least in the coding/markup world, Google returns over 90 instances of the two word phrase "terminal delimiter", as in

The first in each pair is the initial delimiter and the second is the terminal delimiter

or

However, this older version of the join() function also added a terminal delimiter to the end of the sequence

Kris · Answer 3 · 2012-11-13 12:50:20Z

I would think of it as a special case (hyponym) of delimiter.

As we intend to use it exclusively at the end of a string, would it constitute a post-fix?

{(sub-string)(postfix) (sub-string)(postfix) (sub-string)(postfix)}

That will make it a postfix(ed delimiter).

I'm yet to check out if there's already a defined term for this class of delimiter. Might edit in more details if I find any.

closed as too localized by Will Hunting, JSBձոգչ, Daniel δ, tchrist, MετάEd Nov 13 '12 at 22:48