$re = '/^(\S \S{1}(?=\s)|\S(?= \S{2})|\{\S\}|\w{3}(?=\w))/m';
$str = '1 {2 3}
1 2 3
1 23
{1}
{1 2}
123456 ';
preg_match_all($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