Find URL's within an element and wrap them

jquery.findLinkMakeLink.js

// THE FUNCTION
(function($) {
    $.fn.findLinkMakeLink = function() {
        // Test a text node's contents for URLs and split and rebuild it with an anchor
        var testAndTag = function(el) {
            // Test for URLs along whitespace and punctuation boundaries
            var m = el.nodeValue.match(/(https?:\/\/.*?)[.!?;,]?(\s+|"|$)/);
            // If we've found a valid URL
            if (m) {
                // Clone the text node to hold the "tail end" of the split node
                var tail = $(el).clone()[0];
                // Substring the nodeValue attribute of the text nodes based on the match boundaries
                el.nodeValue = el.nodeValue.substring(0, el.nodeValue.indexOf(m[1]));
                tail.nodeValue = tail.nodeValue.substring(tail.nodeValue.indexOf(m[1]) + m[1].length);
                // Rebuild the DOM inserting the new anchor element between the split text nodes
                $(el).after(tail).after($("<a></a>").attr("href", m[1]).html(m[1]));
                // Recurse on the new tail node to check for more URLs
                testAndTag(tail);
            }
            return false;
        }
        // For each element selected by jQuery
        this.each(function() {
            // Select all descendant nodes of the element and pick out only text nodes
            var textNodes = $(this).add("*", this).contents().filter(function() {
                return this.nodeType == 3
            });
            // Take action on each text node
            $.each(textNodes, function(i, el) {
                testAndTag(el);
            });
        });
    }
}(jQuery));

// USE:
$(element).findLinkMakeLink();