improve turning urls into links routine

Hi, I did a quick search for something like this below but did not find it. Would you please criticize it. Thanks. function &MakeUrls(&$data) { $words = explode(" ", $data); $new_data = ""; while (list ($key,$row) = each ($words) ) { if (preg_match ("/^http:\/\//", $row)) { // should just be the url here $new_data .= "<a href=\"$row\">$row</a> "; continue; } if (preg_match ("/http/", $row)) { // catch on the line break which I did not explode on $row = preg_replace ("/(http[^\s]+)/","<a href=\"\\1\">\\1</a>", $row); } $new_data .= "$row "; } return $new_data; } # End Get Peter --------------------------- "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away". -- Philip K. Dick