$re = '/chapter [0-9].*?(?=chapter [0-9]|\Z)/ms';
$str = 'chapter 1 Here is a block of text from chapter one. chapter 2 Here is another block of text from the second chapter. chapter 3 Here is the third and final block of text.';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
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