Text to Link Code

[complex05]

Hello,

I've built some forum software and I would like any link that someone posts automatically be converted into a link with

<a href="$url">$url</a> etc..

Is there a function to do this? If it involves regex, I would need some help since I know nothing about it.

[complex05]

*bump*

[Gruzin]

Are you talking about bbcode, something like this?

[code]<?php
$textarea = $_POST['textarea'];
$smilies = array(
'[B]' => "<strong>",
'[/B]' => "</strong>",
);
$codes = array_keys($smilies);
$textarea = str_replace($codes,$smilies,$textarea);
?>[/code]

[complex05]

no not code.

lets say i'm just talking on this forum right now, and i say

a cool article can be found here: www.google.com

www.google.com should automatically be converted into a link, without me putting any code around it.

[wildteen88]

This will require regex. You will want to write a regular expression (regex) to phish out URL's within a string and then warp the anchor tags around it to be converted to a line. I believe there may already be a thread like this in the regex forum. Search the regex forum and see.