$re = '/^
(?:
\s*
(?=
(?<! \S )
( \S+ ) # (1)
)?
\S
){1}
/x';
$str = 'This is my very boring string
0123 45 67 8901 234567 8
0 1 ';
preg_match_all($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