Posted by Richard Lynch on 05/09/05 05:01

On Fri, May 6, 2005 12:25 pm, Jan said:
> Could someone explain to me the use of the vertical bar in
> expressions like "|<[^>]+>(.*)</[^>]+>|U". I understand that the
> vertical bars are used to separate the expression from the modifier,
> but can't find any documentation about the reasons and rules to do
> this.

The rule is that the first character, whatever it is, is THE character to
mark beginning and end of the expression.

The following are all the SAME:
"|<[^>]+>(.*)</[^>]+>|U"
"?<[^>]+>(.*)</[^>]+>?U"
"X<[^>]+>(.*)</[^>]+>XU"

/ is a common character to use, but he needed / in his expression, so he
picked | instead.

http://php.net/pcre

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