$re = '/(?\'global\'(?:(?:(?\'plain_text\'[^\'"\s]+)(?=[\s"\']))|(?:"(?\'double_quotes\'(?:[^"]|(?<=\\\\)")*)"|(?:\'(?\'simple_quotes\'(?:[^\']|\'(?! )[^\']*\')*)\')|^[^\s]+$|^[^\s]+(?= )|(?<= )[^ ]+$)[^\s"\']*))/';
$str = '\'--data-urlencode\' \'datetime="2017-05-24 18:02:42"\'';
preg_match_all($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