$re = '/\b(?<!\'\w|\w\')[\w\'\\\\]+(?!\'\w|\w\')\b/mu';
$str = 'word
one of each
one fish two fish red fish blue fish
one,two,three
one,\\ntwo,\\nthree
car : carpet as java : javascript!!&@$%^&
testing, 1, 2 testing
go Go GO Stop stop
First: don\'t laugh. Then: don\'t cry.
Joe can\'t tell between app, apple and a.
Joe can\'t tell between \'large\' and large.
multiple whitespaces
,\\n,one,\\n ,two \\n \'three\'';
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