$re = '/^(?=[a-z][^_]*_?[^_]+$)\w{4,}$/im';
$str = 'a88
hell_0
_und
u_nd
un_d
und_
u_n_
u__d
8_no
hell0_
helol_z
he_lo
it is made up of at least 4 characters
it can contain only word character, number, and underscore (max. one time)
it should start with a word character and it cannot end with an underscore.';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php