It is also possible to save the delimiters (this might prove useful if the delimiters were also some sort of text identifier) and to count the length of the data items we are unstringing.

It happened not so in the Retort made by this Page to a certain PrivyCounsellor, who, notwithstanding his advanced Age and dignified Rank, gallantised all the young Girls he came near, yet not in that polite agreeable Manner, wherein a pleasant Turn of Irony renders a little Foolery sufferable, nay not altogether misbecoming in Persons of Gravity;

Maxwelton braes are bonnie / Where early fa's the dew; / An' it's there that Annie Laurie / Gi'ed me her promise true.

Our ability to read historical change and transformation in the funicity of things - the very bedrock of our socialization - is a socio-semiotic skill we begin to acquire in infancy, and is refined throughout our lives.