$re = '/(\d\d?)\/(\d\d?)\/(\d{4})/m';
$str = '01/02/2018
1/2/2018
01/2/2018
// if we put (\\d\\d?)\\/(\\d\\d+)\\/(\\d{4}) the month should be 10,11,12';
preg_match_all($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