$re = '/(>=|<=|\'[^\']*(?:\'\'[^\']*)*\')|=/';
$str = 'select * from where item1=abcd and price>=20 and item1 = abc and title=\'strings=evil\'\'bugs\' and id=-197';
$subst = "$1";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
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