$re = '/(^.*(?<=\bobj)\s*\R)[\s\S]*?\/Form[\s\S]*?^(stream\s*^)[\s\S]*?^(endstream\s+endobj)/m';
$str = '40 0 obj
<<
/PieceInfo
/Subtype /Form
/Resources
<<
/Font
<<
/Fm1 35 0 R
>>
>>
/Type /XObject
/BBox [0 -22.5 131.05 0]
/Length 601
/Matrix [1 0 0 1 0 0]
>>
stream
. . .
A bunch of compressed gibberish here
. . .
endstream
endobj';
$subst = "\1\2\3";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
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