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 -- Like Music? http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php