$re = '/^(?=[a-z][a-z0-9@._-]{5,40}$)[a-z0-9._-]{1,20}@(?:(?=[a-z0-9-]{1,15}\.)[a-z0-9]+(?:-[a-z0-9]+)*\.){1,2}[a-z]{2,6}$/m';
$str = '';
preg_match_all($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