$re = '/^(?P<machinenr>[^\|]*?)\|
(?P<controldone>[^\|]*?)\|
(?P<nrofitems>[^\|]*?)\|
(?P<items>[^\|]*?)\|$/x';
$str = '446408|0|1|111|446408|0|3|99884|111|73732|446408|0|0||';
preg_match_all($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