you could try this it may be slower than explode but you're only talking milliseconds..

/ Create An Infinite Loop.
while(1) {
    while($data = fgets($socket)) {

        /* Seperate All Data */
        preg_match("/^:(.*?)!(.*?)@(.*?)[\s](.*?)[\s](.*?)[\s]:(.*?)$/",$data, $rawdata);
        $nick = $rawdata[1];
        $ident = $rawdata[2];
        $host = $rawdata[3];
        $msg_type = $rawdata[4];
        $channel = $rawdata[5]; 
        $message = rtrim($rawdata[6]);
        $ex = explode(' ', $data);

        /* Create the Commands Trigger */
        $message = explode(" ", trim($message));
        $trigger = array_shift($message);
        $message = implode(" ", $message);

        /* Send PONG Back To The Server. */
        if($ex[0] == "PING"){ fputs($socket, "PONG ".$ex[1]."\n"); }
        ...
        ...

But keep using the $ex array for IRC events other than user events.