$re = '/-(START(?=(?:_(?:(?!-(?:END|START))[^_])*){3,4}-END)(?:(?!-(?:END|START)).)*)_+\d+(?=-END)/m';
$str = 'test-START_one_two_three_4-END
test-START_4-END_one_two_three-END';
preg_match_all($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