$re = '/^(subdomain1\.|subdomain2\.)?(((?<branch>(?!subdomain1|subdomain2).+)\.|)staging\.com)$/m';
$str = 'subdomain1.branch-name.staging.com
subdomain1.branch-name-with-subdomain1.staging.com
subdomain2.subdomain1.staging.com';
preg_match_all($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