$re = '/^(?!$)(?:\d+\s+years?)?(?:(?:\h+|^)\d+\s+months?)?(?:(?:\h+|^)\d+\s+weeks?)?(?:(?:\h+|^)\d+\s+days?)?(?:(?:\h+|^)\d+\s+hours?)?(?:(?:\h+|^)\d+\s+minutes?)?(?:\h+\d+\s+seconds?)?$/m';
$str = '2 days
3 years
12 hours
2 days 6 hours 30 minutes
4352 YEARS 2 weeks 4 days 5 days 2 minutes 30 second';
preg_match_all($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