$re = '/(one|three|four)\s*,\s*(?!\1)(one|three|four)\s*,\s*(?!\1|\2)(one|three|four)/';
$str = 'one,three,four apple is red. should be match
four, three, one orange is orange. should be match
one,four,three the sky is blue. should be match
one,two,four,three should not be match because two is between the group of words
four,one,eight,green,three also not because eight and green is between the group of selected words';
preg_match_all($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