$re = '/(?(DEFINE)
(?<blanks>[[:blank:]]+)
(?<var>"?[[:alnum:]_]+"?)
(?<csvar>("?[[:alnum:]_]+"?,?)+)
)
^
(?&blanks)((?&var))
(?&blanks)((?&var))
(?&blanks)((?&csvar))
/mx';
$str = ' foo foo_123bar foo,bar,bazz
foo2 foo_456bar foo2,bar2';
preg_match_all($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