$re = '/((?:^title\s*=\s*"|\G) *)([^"\s\n]+)/m';
$str = 'title = "What a interesting title foooooooooooo",
title= "What a boring title foo bar foo bar barfoo foobar",
title="What a crazy bar foo title",';
$subst = "$1{$2}";
$result = preg_replace($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