$re = '/(?:(?:\d[- _]*){6,})|(?<num_1>\d[- _]*)(?<num_2>\d[- _]*)(?<num_3>\d[- _]*)(?<num_4>\d)(?<num_5>[- _]*\d)?/';
$str = '"1-2-3-4-5-6" => no
"1-2-3-4-5" => yes match 1
"1-2-3-4" => yes match 2
"1-2-3" => no
"123456" => no
"12345" => yes match 3
"1234" => yes match 4
"123" => no
foo 123 56 78 bar
"0000" will become "****"
"any text 000 00 more texts" will become "any text ***** more texts"..notice that the space is removed
"any text 000 00 more texts 00" will become "any text ***** more texts 00"
"any text 000 00 more texts 00 00" will become "any text ***** more texts ****"
"any text 00-00 more texts 00_00" will become "any text **** more texts ****"
a 0 12345 fdf';
preg_match_all($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