Regex with possible empty matches and multi-line match

Question

I\'ve been trying to \"parse\" some data using a regex, and I feel as if I\'m close, but I just can\'t seem to bring it all home.
The data that needs parsing gener

Answer 1

i'm pretty new to PHP so maybe this is totally out of whack, but maybe you could use something like

$data = <<

yields

Array
(
    [FooID:] =>  123456
    [Name:] =>  Chuck
    [When:] =>  01/02/2013 01:23:45
    [InternalID:] =>  789654
    [User Message:] =>  Hello,
this is nillable, but can be quite long. Text can be spread out over many     lines
And can start with any number of 
's. It can be empty, too
)