$re = '/(\[monitor[^\]]+\][^\[]?)(ignoreOlderThan\s?=\s?[0-9]+\w)([^\[]+?ignoreOlderThan\s?=\s?[0-9]+\w)([^\[]+)?/m';
$str = '[default]host = 10.2.2.15[monitor://apath]ignoreOlderThan = 14dindex=testsourcetype=whateverignoreOlderThan = 30d[monitor://truck]ignoreOlderThan = 14d';
preg_match_all($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