$re = '/^([a-zA-Z0-9-_+]+)(?:-([0-9.]+))?([a-zA-Z])?((?:_(?:(?:alpha|beta|pre|rc|p)[a-zA-Z0-9]*))+)?(?:-r([0-9]+))?(?::([0-9.]+))?$/m';
$str = 'binutils:2.42
binutils-2:2.42
binutils-2.42:2.42';
preg_match_all($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