MySQL Result Handling

Hi all! I have a quite a brain puzzler here that I would love to hear some people's feedback on. I have inherited a PHP system that is definately on the strange side. I am stuck with the situation of either adding to the beast, or simply reprogramming the entire site. The one technique that I have a bit of a question about is realted to the handling of MySQL results. It seems that when you query the database with their system, it takes all the results and outputs them into a string similar to: I have a question<:>I have an answer which is then interpreted: list($question, $answer) = explode("<:>",$result); back to normal variables. Does this soind familiar to anyone? I have never run across anything like this and was wondering if maybe someone could explain to me why this could be desirable. Thanks in advance!