The | operator in Python is the bitwise OR operator. It compares the binary representations of two numbers and returns a new binary number. Each bit in this new number results from performing the OR operation on the corresponding bits of the two input numbers.

Here's an example of using the | operator in Python:

a = 10  # binary 1010
b = 6   # binary 0110

c = a | b  # binary 1110

print(c)  # prints 14

In this example, a and b are integers. The binary representation of a is 1010, and that of b is 0110. When we perform a | b, we get the binary number 1110, which equals the decimal number 14.

It's worth noting that the | operator also serves as the logical OR operator for boolean values in Python. In this context, it returns True if at least one operand is True, and False otherwise.