note 34999 modified in function.preg-replace by vincent

The code below is a bit modified variant of one of automatic-hyperlinkers above (accepts http, https, ftp protocol URLs, also email address), this one also accpets Apache /~user functionality: $text = preg_replace("/(?:^|\b)((((http|https|ftp):\/\/)|(www\.)) ([\w\.]+)([,:%#&\/?~=\w+\.-]+))(?:\b|$)/is", "<a href=\"$1\" target=\"_blank\">$1</a>", $text); $text = preg_replace("/(([\w\.]+))(@)([\w\.]+)\b/i","<a href=\"mailto:$0\">$0</a>",$text); If you have a string with tags , including for example <img src=http:///www.qwe.ee/img.jpg>, you might want to add negative lookbehinds, (?<!\/)(?<!=) before ((((http|https|ftp). This excludes URLs, which begin with / and = --was-- The code below is a bit modified variant of one of automatic-hyperlinkers above (accepts http, https, ftp protocol URLs, also email address), this one also accpets Apache /~user functionality: $text = preg_replace("/(?:^|\b)((((http|https|ftp):\/\/)|(www\.)) ([\w\.]+)([,:%#&\/?~=\w+\.-]+))(?:\b|$)/is", "<a href=\"$1\" target=\"_blank\">$1</a>", $text); $text = preg_replace("/(([\w\.]+))(@)([\w\.]+)\b/i","<a href=\"mailto:$0\">$0</a>",$text); http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-replace.php