I have some scripts that use a lot of preg_match and preg_replace. And I use the ? symbol as a delimiter because
I never used that symbol for anything else in my life, so I never have to worry about escaping it. I would be escaping (and missing) a lot of occurrences if I had been using / or | . I have used these scripts for many months, almost a year. I didn't use them in about a month, maybe a little
more, and I don't remember updating/upgrading PHP during that period. But my mind could be deceiving me. Maybe the last time I used them was before I updated PHP to v. 4.3.1. At least I am 100% sure the scripts and my INI file have not been changed. They should be working.

Now I try to run my old scripts and, in some of them, PHP gives me some attitude:
Warning: Delimiter must not be alphanumeric or backslash in
C:\WINDOWS\Desktop\conversor-folha.php on line 25
Some scripts work, others don't. What can I do to pinpoint the problem?

------------------------ 8< ------------------------
$pattern = '?(Foi encontrado|Foram encontrados) *<b>[0-9]+</b>
*an?ncios?.*Clique nos &iacute;cones para adicionar os an&uacute;ncios
&agrave; &quot;?s';

$po = preg_match ($pattern, $x, $matches);
------------------------ >8 ------------------------

Thanks,
Luciano ES
Santos, SP - Brasil