[RESOLVED] how to write a regex that selects up to a space ?

[steamPunk]

Hi

for a while now i've wanted to make a little function that scans through a text looking for "http://" or "https://" and when it finds it will keep going through the string until it gets to the end of the url - so that i can then replace it with a real href link

I know how to do the bit to find an instance of "http://" but how do i tell it to return the substring up to the next space ?

thanks for your help

[Weedpacket]

"(.?) " will match everything up to the next space.
"[^ ]" is probably more efficient.

[steamPunk]

i tried that but i really don't know what i'm doing when it comes to regular expressions and it was a real mess

however i then found this preg_replace which is supposed to get the url (removing any commas after it etc) and insert into link tags

$str = " Consulats honoraires
Ajaccio : Hugues Schadegg. 8 cours Lucien Bonaparte. BP 815. 20192 Ajaccio cedex 4. Tél [phone]. Fax [phone]. [e-mail] Monaco : Urs Minder. http://www.google.com 10/12 Quai Antoine 1er. MC 98000 Monaco. Tel [phone]. Fax [phone]. [e-mail]. Montpellier : Jean-Paul Aeschlimann. 66 Allée Mac Laren. 34000 Montpellier. Nice : Pierre Rudisuhli. Rés. St-Michel. 69 Av du Roi Albert. BP 280. 06405 Cannes.";

echo preg_replace('\b(https?|ftp|file|http)://[-A-Z0-9+&@#/%?=~_|!:,.;]*[-A-Z0-9+&@#/%=~_|]', '<a href="\0">\0</a>', $str);

trouble is, it gives me the following error

Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Delimiter must not be alphanumeric or backslash in /home.10.26/revuesui/www/test-url.php on line 13

I don't know which delimiter it's referring to

[laserlight]

You forgot your PCRE regex pattern delimiters, e.g., /pattern/

[steamPunk]

ok so i've done that and i had to put some backslashes in and a pair of square brackets before it would do anything at all

now it looks like this

echo preg_replace('/\b(https?|ftp|file|http)[":\/\/"][-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%?=~_|!:,.;]*[-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%=~_|]/', '<a href="\0">\0</a>', $str);

and makes a link out of some of the original url :

<a href="http://">http://</a>www.google.com

can you see where the problem is ?

[steamPunk]

i'll repost that code

echo preg_replace('/\b(https?|ftp|file|http)[":\/\/"][-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%?=~_|!:,.;]*[-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%=~_|]/', '<a href="\0">\0</a>', $str); 
//
//
//

[steamPunk]

woohoo - i got it -

[-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%?=~_|!:,.;]

needed to be

[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#\/%?=~_|!:,.;]

seems to work ok now

thanks

[steamPunk]

just thought i'd post the functions for anyone who's looking for tha same thing

Make a link from a url

function makeLinkOutOfUrl($str){
$str = preg_replace('/\b(https?|ftp|file|http)[:\/\/][-A-Za-z0-9+&@#\/%?=~|!:,.;]*[-A-Za-z0-9+&@#\/%=~|]/', '<a href="\0">\0</a>', $str);
return $str;
}

Make a link from an email address

function makeLinkOutOfMailAddress($str){
$str = preg_replace('/[A-Za-z0-9._%-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+.[A-Za-z]{2,4}/', '<a href="mailto:\0">\0</a>', $str);
return $str;
}

I don't know if they work for all types of url etc but maybe someone might find this useful