$re = '/(?: # non-capturing group
\#summertime\b # match #summertime
| # or
\G(?<!^), # a comma not at the beginning of string and match it only if it\'s after the last match
) # closing the non-capturing group
\s* # some optional whitespaces
\K # forget what we matched so far
[^\s,]+ # match anything that\'s not a whitespace nor a comma one or more times/x';
$str = '#summertime swimming, running, tanning';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
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