$re = '/(\d),(\d)/m';
$str = 'Dow,John
12345,09876
13568,08642,1,2,3,4,5';
$subst = "$1|$2";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php