Example - I wanted to create a table with delimiter "~*". That can be done like below - CREATE external TABLE db1.t1(a string COMMENT '', b string COMMENT '', c string COMMENT '') ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.serde2.RegexSerDe' WITH SERDEPROPERTIES ( 'serialization.format' = '1', 'input.regex' = '(.*?)~\\*(.*?)~\\*(.*)' ) STORED AS INPUTFORMAT 'org.apache.hadoop.mapred.TextInputFormat' OUTPUTFORMAT 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.HiveIgnoreKeyTextOutputFormat' LOCATION '\abc' Note - In regex, I have to repeat the expression for as many columns as in table definition. For example, we had 3 columns. It can't be used for serialization that is. If I wanted to insert data in to the table I can't. It will throw exception. Other way to do same is - create external TABLE `db1`.`t2` (col string) row format delimited location '\abc';