Somewhere in the last few weeks, preg_split changed so that specifiying a limit parameter of 0 returns the string to be split unchanged. Before that, 0 was seemingly treated as no limit, meaning that you could safely specify 0 as the limit argument in order to specify a flag as the fourth argument.

<?php

$foo = 'a|b|c|d';
$m = preg_split('/|/', $foo, 0);

var_dump($m);

?>

will return everything in the same array, whereas if the limit argument is left off (or increased), the string gets split up. The behavior allowing 0 to be no limit should be returned, or another safe argument for limit that means no limit documented.