$re = '/sudo:\s+(?<field>[^ ]+)/m';
$str = 'Dec 2 09:02:17 server1 sudo: ib12345 : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/ib12345 ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/su -';
preg_match_all($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