$re = '/^subject:\s(.+)/im';
$str = 'Received: from DOMAIN.mydomain.com (UnknownHost [127.0.0.1]) by DOMAIN.mydomain.net with SMTP;
Fri, 6 Sep 2013 10:34:07 -0600
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2013 10:34:07 -0600 (MDT)
From: "MyDomain.com"
To: test@anotherdomain.com
Message-ID: <8279725.100.1378485247161.JavaMail.MYDOMAIN$@127.0.0.1>
Subject: Membership Activation
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Membership Activation
';
preg_match($re, $str, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($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