$re = '/\bwhere(?:(?:(?!where)[^][])*\[[^][]*])+\s*/';
$str = 'where this condition and [this = 1] group by 1,2,3
where that and that do that where [this = 1] and [that = 1] group by 1,2,3';
$subst = "";
$result = preg_replace($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