title: PHP - Add link to a URL in a string
body: <p>I have a function that will add the <code>&lt;a href&gt;</code> tag before a link and <code>&lt;/a&gt;</code> after the link. However, it breaks for some webpages. How would you improve this function? Thanks!</p>
  
  <pre><code>function processString($s) 
  {
      // check if there is a link
  
      if(preg_match("/http:\/\//",$s))
      {
          print preg_match("/http:\/\//",$s);
  
  
          $startUrl =  stripos($s,"http://");
  
          // if the link is in between text
          if(stripos($s," ",$startUrl)){
              $endUrl = stripos($s," ",$startUrl);
          }
          // if link is at the end of string
          else {$endUrl = strlen($s);}
  
          $beforeUrl = substr($s,0,$startUrl);
          $url = substr($s,$startUrl,$endUrl-$startUrl);
          $afterUrl = substr($s,$endUrl);
  
          $newString = $beforeUrl."&lt;a href=\"$url\"&gt;".$url."&lt;/a&gt;".$afterUrl;
  
          return $newString;
      }
  
      return $s;
  }
  </code></pre>