$re = '/(?:^([1-9]{9}[ABCD]{1,4})(?=0{1,5}\d{1,5}D*$)|\G)0/m';
$str = '123456789ABCD00001DDD
123456789AAA00000123DD';
$subst = "$1 ";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
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