text_splitter
text_splitter is a Go package for splitting documents into smaller chunks, designed for use in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines and other text-processing workflows.
The package defines a generic TextSplitter interface and provides two concrete implementations:
FixedSplitter -- splits text into fixed-size chunks with configurable overlap.
RecursiveSplitter -- splits text recursively along natural separators (paragraphs, sentences, words, etc.) to preserve semantic boundaries, with fixed-size chunking as a fallback.
Features
- Interface-driven design -- Implement your own splitting strategy by satisfying the
TextSplitter interface.
- Fixed-size chunking -- Split documents into chunks of a configurable maximum length.
- Recursive splitting -- Split text along natural language separators (e.g.,
\n\n, \n, 。, ,, , ,, .) to keep semantically related text together.
- Configurable overlap -- Share a specified number of characters between neighboring chunks to preserve context.
- Concurrent multi-document splitting -- Split multiple documents in parallel using
errgroup, with automatic error propagation and context cancellation.
- Unicode-aware -- Chunk boundaries are calculated on rune count, so multi-byte characters (Chinese, emoji, etc.) are handled correctly.
- Context support -- All splitting methods accept
context.Context for timeout and cancellation control.
Installation
go get github.com/1Vewton/textsplitter
Quick Start
FixedSplitter -- Splitting a single document
package main
import (
"context"
"fmt"
"time"
"github.com/1Vewton/textsplitter/fixedsplitter"
)
func main() {
splitter := fixedsplitter.NewFixedSplitter(
100, // ChunkSize -- max characters per chunk
20, // Overlap -- characters shared between adjacent chunks
)
ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), 5*time.Second)
defer cancel()
document := "This is a long document that needs to be split into smaller chunks for processing."
chunks, err := splitter.SplitText(ctx, document)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
for i, chunk := range chunks {
fmt.Printf("Chunk %d: %s\n", i+1, chunk)
}
}
FixedSplitter -- Splitting multiple documents (concurrently)
package main
import (
"context"
"fmt"
"time"
"github.com/1Vewton/textsplitter/fixedsplitter"
)
func main() {
splitter := fixedsplitter.NewFixedSplitter(100, 20)
ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), 5*time.Second)
defer cancel()
documents := []string{
"First document content...",
"Second document content...",
"Third document content...",
}
results, err := splitter.SplitMultipleTexts(ctx, documents)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
for _, result := range results {
fmt.Printf("FullText: %s\n", result.FullText)
fmt.Printf("Chunk: %s\n\n", result.ChunkResult)
}
}
RecursiveSplitter -- Splitting a single document
package main
import (
"context"
"fmt"
"time"
"github.com/1Vewton/textsplitter/recursivesplitter"
)
func main() {
splitter := recursivesplitter.NewRecursiveSplitter(
100, // ChunkSize -- max characters per chunk
20, // Overlap -- characters shared between adjacent chunks
[]string{"\n\n", "\n", "。", ",", " ", ",", "."}, // Separators -- split in order of priority
)
ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), 5*time.Second)
defer cancel()
document := "This is a long document that needs to be split into smaller chunks for processing."
chunks, err := splitter.SplitText(ctx, document)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
for i, chunk := range chunks {
fmt.Printf("Chunk %d: %s\n", i+1, chunk)
}
}
RecursiveSplitter -- Splitting multiple documents (concurrently)
package main
import (
"context"
"fmt"
"time"
"github.com/1Vewton/textsplitter/recursivesplitter"
)
func main() {
splitter := recursivesplitter.NewRecursiveSplitter(100, 20,
[]string{"\n\n", "\n", "。", ",", " ", ",", "."},
)
ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), 5*time.Second)
defer cancel()
documents := []string{
"First document content...",
"Second document content...",
"Third document content...",
}
results, err := splitter.SplitMultipleTexts(ctx, documents)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
for _, result := range results {
fmt.Printf("FullText: %s\n", result.FullText)
fmt.Printf("Chunk: %s\n\n", result.ChunkResult)
}
}
API
Interface: TextSplitter
Defined in the root textsplitter package:
type TextSplitter interface {
SplitText(ctx context.Context, document string) ([]string, error)
SplitMultipleTexts(ctx context.Context, documents []string) ([]*SplitResult, error)
}
| Method |
Description |
SplitText |
Splits a single document into a slice of chunk strings. |
SplitMultipleTexts |
Splits multiple documents concurrently and returns a flat slice of SplitResult (one entry per chunk, each referencing its original full text). |
Struct: SplitResult
type SplitResult struct {
FullText string // The original document text
ChunkResult string // One chunk from that document
}
Struct: FixedSplitter
type FixedSplitter struct {
ChunkSize int // Maximum number of characters in each chunk
Overlap int // Number of characters shared between consecutive chunks
}
Constructor
func NewFixedSplitter(chunkSize int, overlap int) *FixedSplitter
Methods
func (splitter *FixedSplitter) SplitText(ctx context.Context, document string) ([]string, error)
func (splitter *FixedSplitter) SplitMultipleTexts(ctx context.Context, documents []string) ([]*textsplitter.SplitResult, error)
Struct: RecursiveSplitter
type RecursiveSplitter struct {
ChunkSize int // Maximum number of characters in each chunk
Overlap int // Number of characters shared between consecutive chunks
Separators []string // Ordered list of separators to split on (e.g., ["\n\n", "\n", "。", ",", " ", ",", "."])
}
Constructor
func NewRecursiveSplitter(chunkSize int, overlap int, separators []string) *RecursiveSplitter
Methods
func (splitter *RecursiveSplitter) SplitText(ctx context.Context, document string) ([]string, error)
func (splitter *RecursiveSplitter) SplitMultipleTexts(ctx context.Context, documents []string) ([]*textsplitter.SplitResult, error)
Splitting Behavior
FixedSplitter
- If the document length (in runes) is less than or equal to
ChunkSize, the entire document is returned as a single chunk.
- Otherwise, the document is split into chunks of at most
ChunkSize runes.
- Consecutive chunks overlap by
Overlap runes, preserving context across chunk boundaries.
Example with ChunkSize=60, Overlap=20:
Chunk 1: [characters 0-60)
Chunk 2: [characters 40-100)
Chunk 3: [characters 80-140)
...
RecursiveSplitter
- If the document length (in runes) is less than or equal to
ChunkSize, the entire document is returned as a single chunk.
- Otherwise, the text is recursively split using the provided
Separators list in order of priority:
- Try the first separator (e.g.,
\n\n for paragraphs). If the resulting parts fit within ChunkSize, they are merged up to the limit.
- If a part is still too long, move to the next separator (e.g.,
\n for lines) and recurse.
- If all separators are exhausted, fall back to
FixedSplitter for a forced fixed-size split.
- This approach keeps semantically related text together as much as possible before resorting to character-level splitting.
Concurrent Multi-Document Processing
SplitMultipleTexts uses errgroup to split each document concurrently. Benefits:
- Parallel execution across all documents.
- Context cancellation -- if one split fails or the context expires, all goroutines are cancelled.
- Error propagation -- the first non-nil error is returned.
Unicode Support
The implementation internally converts strings to []rune before chunking, ensuring that multi-byte characters (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, emoji) are counted correctly. Chunk boundaries never split a character's byte sequence.
Requirements
License
MIT