$re = '/\d{4}[^\/]+/m';
$str = '$ cat file1
0775 web:web /path/to/001
0775 web:web /path/to/foo
0775 web:web /path/to/bar
0775 web:web /path/to/baz
0775 web:web /path/to/hello
$ cat file2
0755 web:web /path/to/foo
0755 web:web /path/to/bar
0755 web:web /path/to/baz
$ diff -y file1 file2
0775 web:web /path/to/001 | 0755 web:web /path/to/foo
0775 web:web /path/to/foo | 0755 web:web /path/to/bar
0775 web:web /path/to/bar | 0755 web:web /path/to/baz
0775 web:web /path/to/baz <
0775 web:web /path/to/hello <
# if you could ignore \'^[^\\/]+\' on each line
0775 web:web /path/to/001 <
0775 web:web /path/to/foo | 0755 web:web /path/to/foo
0775 web:web /path/to/bar | 0755 web:web /path/to/bar
0775 web:web /path/to/baz | 0755 web:web /path/to/baz
0775 web:web /path/to/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