note
kwaping
I don't know if this will work for you, but in the past when I've had similar challenges, I've used a string of characters as my separator pattern instead of a single character. For example, <c>#|+|#</c>. The odds of a pattern occuring naturally are less than those of a single character.
<!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only -->
<div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-253850">
<font size="-1"><i>
<br>---<br>
It's all fine and dandy until someone has to look at the code.
</i></font>
</div></div>
793599
793599