note 10443 deleted from function.ereg-replace by jimw

I've seen various notes added for turning URLs (in text) into hyperlinks. Many of them seem to put [[::space:]] before and after to find it. But this will NOT work if the link (or whatever you are looking for) starts at the **very beginning** of the string; or the **very end** of the string. What is needed is to look for the (^|[[:space:]]) at the beginning; and the ([[:space:]]|$) at the end. For example here are a few types of URLs (http, https, and ftp) that are converted... $content = ereg_replace("(^|[[:space:]])(http://[^[:space:]]{1,})([[:space:]]|$)", "\\1<a href=\"\\2\">\\2</a>\\3", $content); $content = ereg_replace("(^|[[:space:]])(https://[^[:space:]]{1,})([[:space:]]|$)", "\\1<a href=\"\\2\">\\2</a>\\3", $content); $content = ereg_replace("(^|[[:space:]])(ftp://[^[:space:]]{1,})([[:space:]]|$)", "\\1<a href=\"\\2\">\\2</a>\\3", $content); And, since I didn't notice it mentioned above,... you can create smileys (for a bulletin board or whatever) with... $content = ereg_replace('(^|[[:space:]]):-\)([[:space:]]|$)', "\\1<img src=\"image/smiley-smile.gif\">\\2", $content); $content = ereg_replace('(^|[[:space:]]):-\(([[:space:]]|$)', "\\1<img src=\"image/smiley-frown.gif\">\\2", $content); (For converting :-) and :-( .. You'll have to set the image sources -- the src' attribute in the img' tag -- to whatever you smiley image files are.) Of course you can use this technique for whatever you want. (Not just hyperlinks and smileys.) (For example, like censoring out swearing, for a kid-safe site,... or whatever). Just use... (^|[[:space:]]) ... for the beginning. And... ([[:space:]]|$) ...for the end ----- Charles Iliya Krempeaux