$re = '/Author:\s*(?<name>.+)\s+Date:\s*(?<date>.+)\s+(?<message>(?:(?!commit .{40}).)+)/';
$str = 'commit 11ae9c97409fb349e2bfa50ed65bd23ec6dbca70
Author: Fabien Potencier <fabien.potencier@gmail.com>
Date: Wed Jul 11 19:51:30 2012 +0200
updated VERSION for 2.0.16
commit 6e14d67cb23439d6700f494e29e809811edeeade
Author: Fabien Potencier <fabien.potencier@gmail.com>
Date: Wed Jul 11 19:50:55 2012 +0200
update CONTRIBUTORS for 2.0.16
commit 0341492ed566fca8df556573b9664f691c5dff3d
Author: Fabien Potencier <fabien.potencier@gmail.com>
Date: Wed Jul 11 19:48:12 2012 +0200
updated CHANGELOG for 2.0.16
commit b18f6f557b5db1e2e6d2c2c0494e0564b91f438d
Author: Fabien Potencier <fabien.potencier@gmail.com>
Date: Tue Jul 10 15:28:02 2012 +0200
[Console] fixed wrong phpdoc (closes #4394)
Match This line';
preg_match_all($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