$re = '/(<?FROM database\.)(.+?\b)/m';
$str = 'select a.record_id, a.name, b.person FROM database.atable a join database.btable b on b.id= a.id;
select c.record_id, c.name, d.person FROM database.ctable c join database.dtable d on c.id= d.id;';
preg_match_all($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