How do I linkify text using ActionScript 3 - regex

Question

I have a text that I want to linkify (identify URLs and convert them to HTML links). The text could be multi-line, and could contain multiple urls like the example below.
My current actionscript code looks like this
<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
import mx.controls.Alert;
import mx.rpc.events.FaultEvent;
import mx.rpc.events.ResultEvent;
private function init():void {
var str:String = "#stack the website for google is http://www.google.com and gmail is http://gmail.com";
//Alert.show(linkify(str),"Error");
txtStatus.htmlText = linkify(str);
}
private function linkify(texty:String):String {
//return texty.replace("/[A-Za-z]+:\/\/[A-Za-z0-9-_]+\.[A-Za-z0-9-_:%&\?\/.=]+/g",function(m):String { return m.linkify(m);});
//return texty.replace(/[A-Za-z]+:\/\/[A-Za-z0-9-_]+\.[A-Za-z0-9-_:%&\?\/.=]+/g, function(m):String {return m.linkify(m);}).replace(/(^|[^\w])(#[\d\w\-]+)/g, function(m2):String{return '#' + m2.substr(1) + ''; });
var pattern:RegExp = /[A-Za-z]+:\/\/[A-Za-z0-9-_]+\.[A-Za-z0-9-_:%&\?\/.=]+/g;
var match:String = pattern.exec(texty);
return texty.replace(pattern,'<a href="' + match + '">' +
match + '</a>');
}
]]>
</mx:Script>
The problem with the above script is that it recognizes the first match and uses that across. Also how do i do it for #?
Any help is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

ooph ... why does everybody use regex these days, to accomplish super simple tasks? also, you forgot, that "+" is a valid character for URLs, as a replacement for space, and even an awful lot of other characters may be used, so your pattern would not even match accordingly ...
well, anyway, have a look at AS3 regex metacharacters ...
that'll GREATLY improve your expression's readability and is much more robust...
i'd go with something like this, really:
var r:RegExp = /(?:http|https):\/\/\S*/g;
trace(str.replace(r, function (s:String,...rest):String {
return '' + s + ''
} ));
but the actual point, was the global flag ...
good luck then ... :)
greetz
back2dos