$re = '/foo(?!(?: [abc])*( [abc])(?: [abc])*\1)(?: [abc])*/m';
$str = 'foo a b c
foo b c a
foo a b
foo b
foo b b
foo a b
foo a b a';
$subst = "";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
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