$re = '/.*?course: (\w+)(?:(?!\bcourse\b).)*MyName\s+(\d+).*?/s';
$str = 'sometext
somemore text here
some other text
course: course1
Id Name marks
____________________________________________________
1 student1 65
2 student2 75
3 MyName 69
4 student4 43
course: course2
Id Name marks
____________________________________________________
1 student1 84
2 student2 73
8 student7 99
4 student4 32
course: course4
Id Name marks
____________________________________________________
1 student1 97
3 MyName 60
8 student6 82';
preg_match_all($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