$re = '/.*?(\s*#\w+)|.+/m';
$str = 'This is a #text, which is #full of #hashtags.
Well, this is not #easy to
#extract #them.
I think I #start to #% lose: #hope.';
$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