URL recognition regexp

[tisource]

This topic has probably been discussed to death, but I would like to know what the best way to recognize URLs in story body.

I have a story archive, where some stories have URLs in them. I want to dynamically make them "clickable". In other words, a URL is in the story body. I want my php to take URL and make it <a href="URL">URL</a>.

The first part is easy... match "http://"... However, its the end part that gets me. How do I build my regexp match so it accurately grabs these URLs?

So what's the best way to do this? Suggestions....??

[Weedpacket]

There's a fully-general regexp for matching URLs in the URL specification, RFC3986. If you replace the generic scheme part there with [url]http://,[/url] you can limit it to http URLs.