$re = '/[\]a-zA-Z0-9]\[([^\.\]]+)\]([\[a-zA-Z0-9])?/i';
$str = 'should pass
$test[2]
$test.var2[4]
$test[0].var3.var4
$test[30].var5[30][3333].var6
$test[0].var7[3][4]
$test[0].var8.var9.var10
below should not pass
$test.var1
$test.var1.asd
test[]
test [0]
test/[0]
test/[0]/
test.[0]
';
preg_match_all($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