$re = '/(?<=<)(?:[a-zA-Z]+(?:\+\d+)*)+[a-zA-Z]*(?=>)/m';
$str = 'Matching <abcde> to abcde.
<abcde1> should not match anything.
Matching <abcde+1> to abcde+1
Matching <abcde+1asd+2+3+4as> to abcde+1asd+2+3+4as
<abcde+> should not match anything.';
preg_match_all($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