$re = '/\S*#(\[[^\]]+\]|\S+)/m';
$str = 'Some text #tag1 text #tag2 ...';
$subst = "<a href=\"targetpage.php?val=$1\">#$1</a>";
$result = preg_replace($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