Purpose of '#' character in regular expressions

[vapour]

Hi,

Quick question here, and wondering if anyone can help. I often see the hash character ('#') in regular expressions and am wondering what purpose it is supposed to serve.

Example:

[PHP]#(?<=[\x00-\x40\x5b-\x60\x7b-\x7f]|^)[/PHP]
Every bit of online documentation I have looked at states the hash character's purpose is merely to denote the line is a comment. Clearly this is not the case if the regular expression is actually being used to test for something.

Can anyone help?

[vapour]

Just bumping here...hope that's OK. Again, any response will be very much appreciated.

[code green]

I don't think it has any syntax value, but then again I am terrifiied of regular expressions.
Are you looking at examples where the hash is part of the pattern to be found by any chance.

[vapour]

Thanks for the response. Nope, the hash just seems to be part of the furniture, so to speak. Some end in #si, for example, denoting it's a regex construction thing.

Any more ideas from anyone?

[kamer]

The hash character (i.e. '#') at the beginning and end is the indicator for the beginning and end of the regex pattern.
http://php.tutorialref.com/preg_replace-example.html

[ahoffmann]

Patterns used in PHP PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions) must be surrounded by a delimiter, which can be non-alphanumeric, non-backslash, non-whitespace character. When you see the hash character at the start of the regex, it is because that particular developer chose it as the delimiter. You should see a hash at the end of the regex as well.

Source: http://php.net/manual/en/regexp.refe...delimiters.php