$re = '/(^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z])([^a-zA-Z].)([^a-zA-Z])([a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]*$)/';
$str = 'Aa!.!abcde';
preg_match_all($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