$re = '/([\s\*]+)@param/m';
$str = '/**
* The addVertex method checks to see if the vertex isn\'t null, and then if
* the graph does not contain the vertex, the vertex is then added and true
* is returned
*
* @param vertex
*
* @throws NullPointerException.
*
* @return b
*/';
$subst = ".$1";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php