Split mysql queries in array, each queries separated by ";"

Given a string containing multiple, semi-colon separated SQL statements, the following function parses out each individual statement and returns them all in an array. It uses one (non-trivial) regex, and one call to preg_match_all(), and correctly handles single and multi-line comments, and single and double-quoted strings, (each of which may contain non-terminating semi-colons to be ignored):

function split_sql($sql_text) {
    // Return array of ; terminated SQL statements in $sql_text.
    $re_split_sql = '%(?#!php/x re_split_sql Rev:20170816_0600)
        # Match an SQL record ending with ";"
        \s*                                     # Discard leading whitespace.
        (                                       # $1: Trimmed non-empty SQL record.
          (?:                                   # Group for content alternatives.
            \'[^\'\\\\]*(?:\\\\.[^\'\\\\]*)*\'  # Either a single quoted string,
          | "[^"\\\\]*(?:\\\\.[^"\\\\]*)*"      # or a double quoted string,
          | /\*[^*]*\*+(?:[^*/][^*]*\*+)*/      # or a multi-line comment,
          | \#.*                                # or a # single line comment,
          | --.*                                # or a -- single line comment,
          | [^"\';#]                            # or one non-["\';#-]
          )+                                    # One or more content alternatives
          (?:;|$)                               # Record end is a ; or string end.
        )                                       # End $1: Trimmed SQL record.
        %x';  // End $re_split_sql.
    if (preg_match_all($re_split_sql, $sql_text, $matches)) {
        return $matches[1];
    }
    return array();
}

Edit 2017-08-15: Fixed error in multiline comment portion of regex pointed out by @jxmallett. Edit 2017-08-16: Tidied regex (added regex shebang and removed unnecessary group $2).

My suggestion would be to replace your delimiter with something that would be unique. For example, a semicolon won't be unique (as you described) so you can't split on this. Newlines (as was stated before) may be a good and simple option.

Are those lines separated by a "newline" character? If yes just explode them:

$my_array = explode("\n",$content);

how about something like this

$fh = fopen('/path/to/your/file.sql', 'r') or die($php_errormsg);
while (!feof($fh)) {
    $line = fgets($fh, 4096);
    if (preg_match($pattern, $line)) { $sql_queries[ ] = $line; }
}
fclose($fh);

Where $pattern can be initialized to an sql insert query format. Using newline wont be a good option as large sql inserts stretch for more than one line

I modified "ridgerunner" function "split_sql" for some problems: no back quoted strings, was skipping queries with syntax errors, not all multi-line comments matches or last empty sql. It always return full array for debug each query or reassembling for profiling in MySQL;

function split_sql($sql, $rtrim = TRUE)
{
    $re = '%
        \s*                                                 # Discard leading whitespace.
            ((?:                                            # Group for content alternatives.
              [^;"\'#`\/-]+                                 # None of these [...]                  
            | \'[^\'\\\\]*(?:\\\\.[^\'\\\\]*)*\'?           # or a single quoted string,
            | "[^"\\\\]*(?:\\\\.[^"\\\\]*)*"?               # or a double quoted string,
            | `[^`]*`?                                      # single back quoted string
            | \/\*(?:.*?\*\/|.*)                            # or a multi-line comment,
            | (?-s)\#.*                                     # or a # single line comment (off s-modifier from here),
            | --.*                                          # or a -- single line comment,
            | -                                             # or -
            )*)                                             # One or more content alternatives
            ;                                               # Record end is a ; or string end.
        %xs';
    if ($rtrim)
        $sql = rtrim($sql, "; \t\n\r\0\x0B");
    if (preg_match_all($re, $sql.';', $matches))
        return $matches[1];        
    return [];
}