links from text

[Anon]

I've studied the posts on this before but They all seem to assume the user enters the "http://" before the www. I want to enter it for them. Below is the code I've come up with.

// function takes the users message as argument

function addlinks($mess)
{
// appends a space to the end of the message

$mess.=" ";

//finds first url beginning with "www."

$start=strpos($mess,"www.",0);

while($start) //or while start !=false
{
//length of the message
$len=strlen($mess);

//finds first space after the "www."
$end=strpos($mess," ",$start);

//assigns the text between the "www." and the next space to $link
$link=substr($mess,$start,($end-$start));

//replaces the $link text with an a href link
$mess=str_replace($link,"<a href=http://$link>$link</a>",$mess);

// tries to find the next "www." after $end
//the problem is here i believe
$start=strpos($mess,"www.",$end);

return $mess;

}

The problem is the $start is never false. It gives $start a value larger than the length of the message. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

[znouza]

bleem. use regexp instead of this terrible.
eg:

$text="this is link www.somewhere.com";

echo ereg_replace("(www.[a-z0-9._-]*)","<a href=\"http://\1">http://\1</a>",$text);

php.net/ereg_replace
php.net/preg_replace for multiple replaces at one time