$re = '/(".*)(,)(\s.*")/i';
$str = 'peter@pan.com, lucky <jack@pot.com>, "William Tell" <billy@tell.com>, "John Rambo, III" <johnny@rambo.com>, "there, might, be, several, commas inside the quotes" <multiple@commas.com>,
"yes, this is also a valid email address, can you believe" <yes@this@is@valid.com>
';
$subst = "$1<!>$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