I am a PHP beginner and saw on the forum this PHP expression:

$regex = <<<'END'
/
  ( [\x00-\x7F]                 # single-byte sequences   0xxxxxxx
  | [\xC0-\xDF][\x80-\xBF]      # double-byte sequences   110xxxxx 10xxxxxx
  | [\xE0-\xEF][\x80-\xBF]{2}   # triple-byte sequences   1110xxxx 10xxxxxx * 2
  | [\xF0-\xF7][\x80-\xBF]{3}   # quadruple-byte sequence 11110xxx 10xxxxxx * 3 
  )
| ( [\x80-\xBF] )               # invalid byte in range 10000000 - 10111111
| ( [\xC0-\xFF] )               # invalid byte in range 11000000 - 11111111
/x
END;

Is this code correct? What do these strange (for me) constructions like <<<, 'END', /, /x, and END; mean?

I recieve:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_SL in /home/vhosts/mysite.com/public_html/mypage.php on line X

Thanks