$re = '/^[a-z](?!\w*__)(?:\w*[^\W_])?$/m';
$str = 'somestring
_not_this_one
thisone_
neither this one
but_this_one
this__one_not
this_one__yes
a
b
cd
c_
c__d
c_d';
preg_match_all($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