$re = '~(?<=/[*]{2}|(?<!\A)\G)\n\K^\s*+(?![*]/)(.*)$~m';
$str = '/**
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.
Lorem Ipsum has been the industry\'s standard dummy text ever since the
1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to
make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but
also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially
unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset
sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop
publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
*/
[rest of code]';
$subst = "/// $1";
$result = preg_replace($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