$re = '/\b((?|(Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec)[a-z,.]*(?: (\d{2}(?:th|st|nd|rd)?)?[,.])?|(\d{2}) (?:(Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec)[a-z,.]*)?) (\d{4}))/';
$str = 'text Mar 20, 2009 text
text March 20, 2009 text
text 20 Mar. 2009 text
text Sep 2010 text
text Mar 20th, 2009 text
text Mar 21st, 2009 text
';
preg_match_all($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