Regex to capture everything before first optional string

Try this: (.*?)(?:EFG|$)

This will match any character (as few as possible) until it finds EFG.

Another way to do it:

$str = 'Q$TQ@#%GEFGw35hqb';
$res = preg_split('/EFG/', $str);
print_r($res);

You can use

'/(.*?)(?=EFG|$)/'

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