- Patterns often contain '|' which conflicts with most Markdown->HTML code

Unless this character is replaced, it causes the table to get split up mid-cell.  The current "suggested" workaround is to use the HTML symbol for '|' until this gets fixed (https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/1238).  Unfortunately, that means we also need to use \<code> tags as ` causes the symbol to be printed as plain-text \&#124;.