$re = '/http:\/\/www\.\w+\.com/m';
$str = 'This is a test, with http://www.example.com and more stuff...
another one is http://www.test.com oh yes';
$subst = "<a href=\"$0\">$0</a>";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
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 PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php