Commas and periods can appear in URLs, so they are acceptable anywhere
in the URL except for at the end.

private function linkUser():String {
return arguments[1].substr(0, 1) + “<a href=\”http://twitter.com/”
+ arguments[1].substr(2,arguments[1].length-3)+”\”>” +
arguments[1].substr(1,arguments[1].length-2) + “</a>” +
arguments[1].substr(arguments[1].length-1,1);
}
private function linkUrl():String {
return arguments[1]+”<a
href=\”"+arguments[2]+”\”>”+arguments[2]+”</a>”;
}
var regUser:RegExp = /([\s|\(|\[]@+\w*(\s|,|!|\.|\n|\)|\]|\-|\:))/g;
var regUrl:RegExp =
/([^"|^>])(http:\/\/+[a-zA-Z0-9\.\-\/_+=%&\?\,]*[a-zA-Z0-9\-\/_+=%&\?])/g;
var _text:String = “@jimjeffers: I (@brianshaler) like
http://donttrustthisguy.com/, and think it
(http://donttrustthisguy.com) is great!”;
_text = ” ” + _text + ” “;
_text = _text.replace(regUser, linkUser);
_text = _text.replace(regUrl, linkUrl);
_text = _text.substr(1, _text.length-2);
trace(_text);
// <a href=”http://twitter.com/jimjeffers”>@jimjeffers</a>:
I (<a href=”http://twitter.com/brianshaler”>@brianshaler</a>)
like <a href=”http://donttrustthisguy.com/”>http://donttrustthisguy.com/</a>,
and think it (<a
href=”http://donttrustthisguy.com”>http://donttrustthisguy.com</a>)
is great!

Thank you so much about this post. It was really helpful to understand the use of regular expressions in AS3, plus you hinted me to a wonderful OS X app for previewing RegExps!

About the optimization of your loop, it might be solved just by adding the Global flag in your regular expression at the very end: /g For instance, in your example, var url:RegExp = /[^"|^>](http:\/\/+[\S]*)/g;

This will automatically “do the loop” for you and replace all instances at once.

All the best,
Eduard

I’m needing it to loop thur an array of objects and parse each one with their respective links. So I really don’t know RegEx to change what you have and I don’t understand you if statement for the @. So I guess I’ll just keep the hack I have and strip out the wierd null I get. It works other than that.

is a 404.

Check out my code in the actual source for the feed reader I built:

RSS Dropper

The only problem is I get a null before my string that the function makes

here is the code:

private function dropRSS():void {
//var cur:String = “Hey @sunnythaper, @shalerjump, @jamesarcher! Check this out: http://tinyurl.com/377owu”

var cur:String = _statusText;
if (cur.substr(0,1) == “@”) { // Skip response messages as they do not always provide enough context to be stand alone statements.
trace(“stall”);
_current++;
dropRSS();
} else {
cur = cur+” “; // Append a space at the end so RegEx catches trailing expressions

var twitterUser:RegExp = /(\s@+\w*(\s|,|!|\.|\n))/; // ”
var url:RegExp = /[^"|^>](http:\/\/+[\S]*)/;

while(twitterUser.exec (cur) != null) {
cur = cur.replace(twitterUser, pointToUser);
}

while(url.exec (cur) != null) {
cur = cur.replace(url, setUrl);

}
cur = cur.replace(/null/,”");
output.htmlText += cur + “\n”;

_current++;
}
}