$re = '/(^| ).?(R|D)/';
$str = '-D-K4_NNNN_M116_R1_001.gz _D-K4_NNNN_M56_R1_001.gz R-K4_NNNN_KQ9_R1_001.gz D-K4_NNNN_M987_R1_001.gz _R-K4_NNNN_M987_R1_001.gz';
preg_match_all($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