$re = '/([\w\.]+):([\w\-]+):(\w+).*:([\w\.]+):/';
$str = 'org.eclipse.aether:aether-impl:jar:0.9.0.M2:compile
com.google.code.findbugs:annotations:jar:3.0.0:compile
org.sonatype.sisu:sisu-guice:jar:no_aop:3.1.0:compile';
preg_match_all($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