$re = '/<a.*(?:href="([^"]+?)").*<\/a>/m';
$str = '<ul class="social">
<li>
<a id="facebooklink" href="" style="display:none;" class="facebook facebooklink" title="Become a fan on Facebook">Become a fan on Facebook<span></span></a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://twitter.com/StackOverflow" id="twitterlink" style="display:none;" class="twitter twitterlink" title="Follow us on Twitter">Follow us on Twitter<span></span></a>
</li>
<li>
<a id="linkedinlink" style="display:none;" class="linkedin linkedinlink" title="Follow us on LinkedIn">Follow us on LinkedIn<span></span></a>
</li>
</ul>';
preg_match_all($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