[Orgmode] [HOW] no way to escape vertical bar (pipe char) in tables?

[Vladimir Alexiev]

I want to manage some perl regexps in a table
then feed them to a code block (literate programming).
Unfortunately they include alternatives (|) 
and the table editor thinks this is a column break.

There's no way to escape this?

On a related thought: what is the best way to manage
leading/trailing spaces in a table cell?
I've been forced to use \x20 for this purpose...