$re = '/^(?:[A-Za-z]{1,4}|[A-Za-z]{4}\d+)$/m';
$str = 'crow1111111111
crowe111111111
cro
crow
c1111111
111111crow';
preg_match_all($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