$re = '/(\d+)(?=(,|:).*?~.*?~.*?\1_(.))|#|,|:.*/';
$str = '#1,0110,0010:~;0101_1000;0110_1001;0111_1010;1000_1011;1001_1100;1010_1101;1011_1110;1100_1111,~0000_00001_10010_20011_30100_40101_50110_60111_71000_81001_9';
$subst = "$3";
$result = preg_replace($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