$re = '/"[^"]+"|(?:^\S+|\W-\S+)(*SKIP)(*F)|\S+/m';
$str = 'test --par2 --par23=whatever 0 xd true hello "string test"
or
test --par23=whatever 0 xd true hello --par2 "string test"
or
test 0 xd "string test" true hello --par2 --par23=whatever';
preg_match_all($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