$re = '/(\w*)<?>?\s*=(?=(?:[^"]|"[^"]*["])*$)/m';
$str = 'import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
private final String COMMENTS = "test";
private final String VARIABLE_NAME_REGEX="(\\w*)<?>?\\s*=(?=(?:[^"]|"[^"]*["])*$)";
String test="test";
String test222;
String includeThisAlso ;
List <String> arr;
List <String> list=null;
';
$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