$re = '/(?i)^([a-z]+|\d+)-([a-z]+|\d+)$/m';
$str = '1
3
10-15
17
A
b
XX-YY
z
5-A';
preg_match_all($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