frodo72's suggestion is short, simple and probably good enough. However, if you insist URLs should follow whitespace, this will work better: 
$message =~ s#(?<=\s)(http://\S+)#<a href="$1">$1</a>#g;

[download]
(using lookbehind assertions, see perldoc perlre). This, however, will not replace the URL that starts in the very first character in $message (since it's not following no whitespace). We can replace that separately: 
$message =~ s#^(http://\S+)#<a href="$1">$1</a>#;
$message =~ s#(?<=\s)(http://\S+)#<a href="$1">$1</a>#g;

[download]
URLs are, however, often followed by a punctuation sign, which unfortunately will be included in our link (as in "http://google.com, for example…"). To remove this effect, make URLs end with a letter: 
$message =~ s#^(http://\S+[a-z])#<a href="$1">$1</a>#;
$message =~ s#(?<=\s)(http://\S+[a-z])#<a href="$1">$1</a>#g;

[download]
I could go on talking about funny characters and special cases, but I'll just stop here and suggest you use Regexp::Common: 
use Regexp::Common qw( URI );
$message =~ s#^($RE{URI}{HTTP})#<a href="$1">$1</a>#;
$message =~ s#(?<=\s)($RE{URI}{HTTP})#<a href="$1">$1</a>#g;

[download]

In reply to Re: detecting URLs and turning them into links by akho
in thread detecting URLs and turning them into links by keiusui

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.