$re = '/^\s*function\s+(?:(?:\[((?:\s*(?:\w+[\w0-9]*)\s*,?)+)\]|(\w+[\w0-9]*))\s*=)?[\s.]*(\w+[\w0-9]*)\s*(?:\(([^)]*)\))?/m';
$str = 'function loss = conductionLo7ss (self, Irms, m, DPF)
function [loss, arg2] = conductionLoss (self, Irms, m, DPF)
function loss = gf (self, Irms, m, DPF)
function loss = gf(self, Irms, m, DPF)';
preg_match_all($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