$re = '/\b([A-z*]+)-(?=[A-z*]+\b)/m';
$str = 'Jean-Pierre bought "blue-green-red" product-2345 and other blue-red stuff.';
$subst = "$1 ";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
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