$re = '/(id="page_([0-9]+)" +class=)"[^"]*">/m';
$str = '<a id="page_123" class="garbage1"></a>some text<a id="page_124" class="garbage2"></a>';
$subst = "\1\"pagenum\"> \2 ";
$result = preg_replace($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