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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:
    1. Try the first separator (e.g., \n\n for paragraphs). If the resulting parts fit within ChunkSize, they are merged up to the limit.
    2. If a part is still too long, move to the next separator (e.g., \n for lines) and recurse.
    3. 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

  • Go 1.25 or later

License

MIT

About

The Golang package to chunk documents for RAG.

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