$re = '/<img(?!.*\s+alt\s*=).+$/mi';
$str = '<img src="smiley.gif" alt="Smiley face" height="42" width="42">
<img src="smiley2.gif" height="42" width="42">
<img src="smiley3.gif" alt="Smiley face Three" height="42" width="42">';
preg_match_all($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