Output # and # as normal text on Twitter feed - php

Question

I'm outputting a Twitter feed using the variable $tweet, when it outputs the tweet it stops when it hits an # or hastag, is it possible to just output those as normal text?
E.g
This is what happens when it tries to show a #
(i.e as soon as it hits the # it stops, the same applies to a hashtag)
UPDATE:
<?php
function parseTweet($text) {
$pattern_url = '~(?>[a-z+]{2,}://|www\.)(?:[a-z0-9]+(?:\.[a-z0-9]+)?#)?(?:(?:[a-z](?:[a-z0-9]|(?<!-)-)*[a-z0-9])(?:\.[a-z](?:[a-z0-9]|(?<!-)-)*[a-z0-9])+|(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?))(?:/[^\\/:?*"|\n]*[a-z0-9])*/?(?:\?[a-z0-9_.%]+(?:=[a-z0-9_.%:/+-]*)?(?:&[a-z0-9_.%]+(?:=[a-z0-9_.%:/+-]*)?)*)?(?:#[a-z0-9_%.]+)?~i';
'#([A-Za-z0-9_]+)';
$tweet = preg_replace('/(^|\s)#(\w+)/', '\1#\2', $text);
$tweet = preg_replace('/(^|\s)#(\w+)/', '\1#\2', $tweet);
$tweet = preg_replace("#(^|[\n ])(([\w]+?://[\w\#$%&~.\-;:=,?#\[\]+]*)(/[\w\#$%&~/.\-;:=,?#\[\]+]*)?)#is", "\\1[link]", $tweet);
return $tweet;
}
$username='teamworksdesign'; // set user name
$format='json'; // set format
$tweet=json_decode(file_get_contents("http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/{$username}.{$format}")); // get tweets and decode them into a variable
$theTweet = parseTweet($tweet[0]->text);
$newTweet = substr($theTweet,0,65);
echo '<a class="tweet" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.twitter.com/teamworksdesign"> "' . $newTweet . '..."</a>';
?>

Answer 1

EDIT: The answer is in the comments.
Some parts of that function appear to be unnecessary. You could have a go with this function instead, as I know this one works?
function parseTweet($ret) {
$ret = preg_replace("#(^|[\n ])([\w]+?://[\w]+[^ \"\n\r\t< ]*)#", "\\1\\2", $ret);
$ret = preg_replace("#(^|[\n ])((www|ftp)\.[^ \"\t\n\r< ]*)#", "\\1\\2", $ret);
$ret = preg_replace("/#(\w+)/", "#\\1", $ret); // Usernames
$ret = preg_replace("/#(\w+)/", "#\\1", $ret); // Hash Tags
return $ret;
}

Answer 2

Now - not knowing exactly where your problem is, this is what i do when i am reading a tweet to display as HTML:
// filter the user's username out of tweets
$tweet = str_replace($username . ": ", "", $tweet);
// turn URLs into hyperlinks
$tweet = preg_replace("/(http:\/\/)(.*?)\/([\w\.\/\&\=\?\-\,\:\;\#\_\~\%\+]*)/", "Link", $tweet);
// link to users in replies
$tweet = preg_replace("(#([a-zA-Z0-9\_]+))", "\\0", $tweet);
// add the time posted
$tweet = $tweet . " <span class=\"tweetwhen\">" . $posted . "</span>";