I have created a forum where users can post messages. Within messages, I want to replace every word that begins with "http://" with an html link.

For example, if the message was: 

This site could be useful:
http://www.google.com

[download]

then I would want the message to be replaced with: 

This site could be useful:
<a href="http://www.google.com">http://www.google.com</a>

[download]

Here is the Perl code that I have so far for the $message variable: 

@message_words = split(/ /, $message);
for($x = 0; $x < @message_words; $x++)
{
 if($message_words[$x] =~ /^http:\/\//is)
 {
  $message_words[$x] = "<a href=\"$message_words[$x]">$message_words[$
+x]</a>";}
 }
}
$message = join(' ', @message_words);

[download]

The above code breaks up the message into individual words and replaces words that start with "http://" with an html link.

My problem is that if the word follows a line break rather than a space, then the line break is at the beginning of the word and the "http://" is not detected at all.

Can anyone provide better, more simple code rather than looping through every word?

Just to keep this simple, I am not worrying about special characters within URLs at this time.

Any help would be gratefully appreciated. Thank you so much!

In reply to detecting URLs and turning them into links by keiusui

Title:
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