meaning of the letter "~" in regex

Question

what is the meaning of the "~" in regex .For example in this code

preg_match("~^(\(\d+\)|\d+\-)?\d{10,20}$~",$value)

this code check for wether the phone number contains extension or not. I have tried to remove to the "~" in this code and got an error like this:

Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: No ending delimiter '^' found in C:\xampp\htdocs\test\my_application\Phone.php on line 21

It is regex bound markers. In most regexes `/` are used instead. — BlitZ, Sep 22 '13 at 15:33
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/938100/tilde-operator-in-regular-expressions — Eric Hotinger, Sep 22 '13 at 15:34

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 22 '13 at 15:34

6

This character is called Tilde and in this case is simply a placeholder, it's just being used as a delimiter. It is simply delimiting the start and end of your regex pattern.

answered Sep 22 '13 at 15:34

aleroot

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meaning of the letter "~" in regex

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