find & replace links in a paragraph

[yaz]

I'm trying to create a function that finds all the links in a paragraph.

 

I found a function that found & replaced links using preg_replace:

function urls2linksSimple($text){
  //"urls2links - Simple" function by mBread @ SwirlDrop / m-bread web labs ( http://m-bread.com/lab/php/urls2linksSimple )
  $pattern = '\b(((((H|h)(T|t)|(F|f))(T|t)(P|p)((S|s)?))\://)?(www.|[a-zA-Z0-9].)[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6}(\:[0-9]{1,5})*(/(|[a-zA-Z0-9\.\,\;\?\'\\\+&%\$#\=~_\-]+?))*)($|[^\w/][<\s]|[<\s]|[^\w/]$)';
  $replacement = '\'<a href="\'.((\'$4\' == \'\')?\'http://$1\':\'$1\').\'" target="_blank">$1</a>$16\'';
  return preg_replace('¦'.$pattern.'¦e', $replacement, $text);
};

 

So I want to use the same pattern ($pattern) to just find the links using preg_match and return them in an array. But it thew an error "Delimiter must not be alphanumeric or backslash in...". 

 

preg_match($pattern, $text, $matches);