[syslog-ng] PCRE in patterndb with back substitution

I have a case where an application logs something like {date} {host} {program}: my first line... ...my second line... ...and my third line. I want to make a correlation and unwrap these lines into {date} {host} {program}: my first line my second line and my third line. I started writing the patterndb to do this, but matching the ... at the end of the line is difficult, so I used @PCRE:line:(.*)\.\.\.$@ but I then need to only use the $1 to set a value <values>  <value name="mymessage">$1</value> </values> Would this be the correct syntax to do this? Is there an easier way that would perform well? Thanks,