How to remove # from Twitter hashtags?

Question

I want to strip off the # from twitter hash-tags, so:

Input: I love #winter and #ice-skating
Output: I love winter and ice-skating

I thought th

Answer 1

1. You need to have a sub-pattern to match the string without the pound sign
2. Don't wrap 1 in the replacement string with curly braces

$tweet = preg_replace('/#([^\s]*)/', '$1', $tweet);

Answer 2

Faster solution:

$tweet = str_replace('#', '', $tweet)

No regex required

Answer 3

You need to surround the part you want to capture in parentheses:

$tweet = preg_replace('/#([\w-]+)/i', '$1', $tweet);

See it working online: ideone

I also changed the regular expression to be more specific, but for an even better regular expression I refer you to this question and its answers (for .NET but the idea is the same in PHP):

• Best HashTag Regex