Validate that a password contains an uppercase letter and either a number or a symbol

I am making a method so your password needs at least one capital and one symbol or number. I was thinking of splitting the string in to loose characters and then use preg_match() to count if it contains one capital and symbol/number.

However I did something like this in action script but can't figure out how this is called in php. I can't find a way to put every character of a word in an array.

AS3 example

for(var i:uint = 0; i < thisWordCode.length -1 ; i++)
{
    thisWordCodeVerdeeld[i] = thisWordCode.charAt(i);
    //trace (thisWordCodeVerdeeld[i]);
}