$re = '/([A-z])((?![A-z]{2,3}$)\w){2,3}/m';
$str = 'Bt12
bt12
bte2
bt1
b123
b12
Bte
1bt
123
b1
abcd
12
ab';
preg_match_all($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