$re = '/^(#\h*)((\[\d+]|\{\d+}|\(\d+\))(?:\h+(?3))*)$/m';
$str = '# [1] {1} [2] {10} [3] [3] [4] {10} {100} [1] [5]
# [5] {1} [6] (10) (20) (10) {10} [7] [5] [6] {10} {100} [8] [5] (10) (30)
# (10) (30) [7] {1} [8] {10} [9] [7] [8] {100} {101} [9] [5] {101} (50)';
preg_match_all($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