$re = '/\babc=(.*?)(?=\|\||$)/m';
$str = 'xyz=abcdef|abcdef||abc=123456|123456||cat=dog|dog||foo=bar|bar||
xyz=abcdef|abcdef||abc=123456|123456
xyz=abcdef|abcdef||abc=123456|123456||
abc=123456|123456||xyz=abcdef|abcdef||';
preg_match_all($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