$re = '/^(\d\d\/\d\d\/\d\d\d\d.*?)(?=^^\d\d\/\d\d\/\d\d\d\d|\Z)/ms';
$str = '06/01/2016, 10:40 pm - abcde
07/01/2016, 12:04 pm - abcde
07/01/2016, 12:05 pm - abcde
07/01/2016, 12:05 pm - abcde
07/01/2016, 6:14 pm - abcde
fghe
07/01/2016, 6:20 pm - abcde
07/01/2016, 7:58 pm - abcde
fghe
ijkl
07/01/2016, 7:58 pm - abcde';
preg_match_all($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