$re = '/^(?:(?:\d{0,3}[a-z]{1,3}\d{1,3})+|(?:[a-z]{0,3}\d{1,3}[a-z]{1,3})+)$/m';
$str = 'i7g172w2n
adab172cd
aaa172afa
ab21cd172
abc21a3d3
abc2p7373';
preg_match_all($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