$re = '/(?<=XXX >>> \[|\G)([^][,]*),(?=[^][]*\])/';
$str = 'ab, xy, de XXX >>> [a, b, c] foo, bar, baz';
$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