$re = '/^([A-Z]{1,3})\h+([A-Z]{1,3})[-*][A-Z]{5}$/m';
$str = 'D HG-ABCDE : Country should be D, District should be HG
A S-FGHIJ : Country should be A, District should be S
D AC-KLMNO : Country should be D, District should be AC
A BR-PQRST : Country should be A, District should be BR
A RO*UVWXY : Country should be A, District should be RO
D HG-ABCDE
A S-FGHIJ
D AC-KLMNO
A BR-PQRST
A RO*UVWXY';
preg_match_all($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