$re = '/^[a-z0-9](-?[a-z0-9])*$/mi';
$str = 'login
lo-gin
Log23gin
log2-3gin
L--login
L--lo--gin
L---login
---login
login-
login--';
preg_match_all($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