$re = '/(?<=\n$).*|^$/m';
$str = '1.a food made from dried grains of maize that swell when they are heated
2.a food made from dried grains of maize that swell when they are heated
Thesaurus: rice, wheat and grain productshyponym types of food or drinkhypernym
3.
4.a food made from dried grains of maize that swell when they are heated';
preg_match_all($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