use strict;
my $str = 'This is a test, with http://www.example.com and more stuff...
another one is http://www.test.com oh yes';
my $regex = qr/http:\/\/www\.\w+\.com/mp;
my $subst = '<a href="$0">$0</a>';
my $result = $str =~ s/$regex/$subst/rg;
print "The result of the substitution is' $result\n";
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html