For instance, I have the following string:

table:column

I need to get "table" as the result of the php regular expression.

So, I need everything before the ":" symbol

After that regular expression is performed, I would also like to get everything after the ":" symbol, or "column" as well.

I think there is more than one way to it. Explode will do the job.

Indeed, explode fits perfectly in this situation.
And if you have many table:column pairs, you could for example do this

PHP Code:

$string = "table:column;table:column;table:column;table:column";
$pairs = explode(';', $string);
$split = array();
foreach ($pairs as $pair) {
   $tmp = explode(':', $pair);
   $split[$tmp[0]] = $tmp[1];
}

/* Now $split is an array as in
 * 
 * array(
 *    table => column,
 *    table => column,
 *    etc...
 * );
 */