regex101: PCRE (Legacy) Match Workspace

Pro

1st Alternative<a.*?<\/a>

<athe literal text <a (case sensitive)

.*?any character (except for line terminators), repeated any number of times

<the literal < (60₁₀ / 74₈ / 3C₁₆)

\/the literal / (47₁₀ / 57₈ / 2F₁₆)

a>the literal text a> (case sensitive)

2nd Alternativehttp:\/\/\S+

http:the literal text http: (case sensitive)

\/the literal / (47₁₀ / 57₈ / 2F₁₆)

\S+any non-whitespace character, repeated at least once

Global pattern flags

g modifier: global. Finds all matches instead of stopping after the first

25 tokens

Regular Expression

<a.*?<\/a>|http:\/\/\S+

New

adasdas http://www.stackoverflow.com asdasas
adasdasahttp://www.stackoverflow.com/something asdas
adasdas<a href="somelink">           http://www.stackoverflow.com     </a>asdasas
adasdasa<a href="somelink">http://www.stackoverflow.com/something</a> asdas

Substitution

adasdas http://www.stackoverflow.com asdasas
adasdasahttp://www.stackoverflow.com/something asdas
adasdas<a href="somelink">           http://www.stackoverflow.com     </a>asdasas
adasdasa<a href="somelink">http://www.stackoverflow.com/something</a> asdas