You're the welcome, but you could post some more code and a real-world example of what ends up inside $status. I think that many of us got fooled into thinking that $status might contain the whole value "P|F|C|D|I|A|N|R|S|X", pipe characters included. Please post an example of an actual value and how you get it from the database.

Moreover, you're maybe doing some iteration over the results from the database. If so, please post the loop as well. As a rule of thumb, post anything that may help us understanding where you come from, how you munge your data and where you want to go. Cutting out all that's not necessary to the goal :)