$re = '/<link +?(?:.*?)type="image\/x-icon"(?:.*?)href="(.+?)"(?:.*?) *?\/?>/m';
$str = '// Below ones must be parsed
<link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="#" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="#" />
<link rel="icon" href="#" type="image/x-icon"/>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="#" type="image/x-icon"/>
// Below ones must be ignored
<link rel="search" href="search.html">
<link rel="help" href="help.html">';
preg_match_all($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