PHP's ereg_replace

[ShadowBlade]

Hello.
I'm making an interface for creating and editing data stored in a file. I don't allow the user to use any kind of HTML, so I've created a VB code type of thing, which I have working just as expected. However, I want to have links where any http:// string is made into an HTML link. I've accomplished this bit fine (using attached code from the php.net docs), but when the user edits a story, I need the links to be converted back into just the URL while they're looking at it. I found via google search (also attached), an ereg_replace function that does this, but it truncates the result so it begins with the last replaced link and ends at the end of the file. (a demo is also attached)

EDIT:
Sorry, the code didn't maintain my line breaks!
I have comments indicating each item.

EDIT 2: After editing, it appears the AT parser doesn't like me - I'm posting my attachment on pastebin

EDIT 3: http://pastebin.com/m7e3069c9

 

[Ipreferspam]

Might I suggest that you save the un-replaced source in your database and call a function that converts all http:// strings into HTML links when the page source is queried and displayed? This way you are only needing to write code to convert from http:// to an HTML link and not the reverse.

 

[ShadowBlade]

That could be quite inefficient because there can't be any limit on the size due to the nature of what it's being used for.

 

[ShadowBlade]

What I ended up doing was string replacing "<a href=\", "\">" and "</a>" with nothing, then using ereg replace on the resulting double URL.
Not the cleanest, but it gets the job done.