eregi_replace help!

Hi, I have a rather annoying eregi_replace which I can't get to work. I have a string, $page which contains a webpage. In the page links are denoted like so: ###LINK###Link Name###URL or Section###ELINK### There are a number of these in $page. I need to use eregi_replace() to replace the above string with a proper link: <a href="URL or Section">Link Name</a> Not too bad, right? However, If need to do some manipulation on the "URL or Section" bit. If it is a URL (begining with "http://", "ftp://", etc) then it just needs to be put there, ie: ###LINK###PHP###http://www.php.net/###ELINK### = <a href="http://www.php.net">PHP</a> But if it is a section on the site like this: ###LINK###Hello###Main.Section 1.Section 2.Hello World###ELINK### It need to be replaced with this: <a href="/main.section_1.section_2.hello_world.php">Hello</a> Here is the rather long (an not working) eregi_replace call I have: $page = eregi_replace("###LINK##(.*)####(.*)###ELINK###", "<a href=\".(eregi("^http://", \\2) ? trim(\\2) : (strtolower(str_replace("\\", "_", eregi_replace("(/| |:|\*|\?|<|>|\|)","_",trim(\\2)))).".php")).">\\1</a>", $page); 1. I dont think the regular express is really right 2. I'm getting the message "Warning: Unexpected character in input: '\' (ASCII=92) state=1 in c:\users\david\help\www\generate.php on line 24" serval times, which is the above line. Any ideas on how to make this work would be great! Thanks! Regards, David