$re = '/(?:{(?:if ([^}]+)|(else)|(\/if))}|^)([^{]*(?:(?!{(?:if [^}]+|else|\/if)}){[^{]*)*)/';
$str = '{if $module=admin}
sdf
{else}
dsfsdf
{if $module=admin}
blah{invalid} blah
sdf
{/if}
{if $module=admin}
blah{invalid} blah
{else}
sdf
{/if}
{/if}';
preg_match_all($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