$re = '/<code>[^<]*</code>/u';
$str = '<p>I am trying to have the \\"Birthday\\" and \\"Name\\" properties of an Org-mode entry added to the agenda automatically:</p>\\n\\n<pre><code>* John\\n :PROPERTIES:\\n :Name: John\\n :Birthday: (5 4 1900)\\n :END:\\n</code></pre>\\n\\n<p>I found a way to add an entry at the correct anniversary date in the agenda by inserting the following line right after the properties:</p>\\n\\n<pre><code>%%(apply \'diary-anniversary (read (org-entry-get nil \\"Birthday\\"))) John\\n</code></pre>\\n\\n<p>However, using this code, I still have to enter the name manually. Is there a way to have the value of the \\"Name\\" property added to the diary text automatically for all entries?</p>\\n\\n<p><strong>EDIT 1</strong>: the example did not work before, now added parantheses around the value of the birthday property</p>';
preg_match_all($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