$re = '/^(?=.{1,50}$)[a-z0-9]+(?:[-_\/][a-z0-9]+)*[-_\/]?$/m';
$str = 'hello
123hello
hello/world
hello_world
hello-world
hello-world/apple
hello_world/apple
hello_world/apple123
helloWorld
-hello
_hello
$hello
/hello
hello$
hello_world/-apple
hello_world/_apple
hello_world//apple
hello_
hello-
hello/';
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