$re = '~href=[^>]+\.pdf"~s';
$str = '<li>Your browser may be missing a required plug-in contained in <a href="http://get.adobe.com/reader/">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a>. Please reload this page after installing the missing component.<br />If this error persists, you can also save a copy of <a href="http://www.police.vt.edu/VTPD_v2.1/crime_stats/crime_logs/data/VT_2011-01_Crime_Log.pdf">';
preg_match_all($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