Regular Expression for link in vb.net label.

[User 4122428]

Hi All, I've got text going into a DB which may contain links, or naked URL's. I do cleanup on the way in to avoid XSS attacks, but on the way out, I want any URL's to display as links. So, I've got a couple possibilities. If the link is already within an anchor tag, then I want it to display properly as a link. If the link is a plain URL within the text, I need to add an anchor tag. I'm currently using: Regex.Replace(dr.Item(1), "(http|https):\/\/[\w\-_]+(\.[\w\-_]+)+([\w\-\.,@?^=%&:/~\+#]*[\w\-\@?^=%&/~\+#])", Function(match As Match) String.Format("<a href=""{0}"">{0}</a>", match.ToString()), RegexOptions.IgnoreCase) This will add an anchor tag surrounding a naked URL, but what I need is for it not to act on a URL that is already within an anchor tags. Help please?

[Not Active]

Save yourself the trouble and clean the anchor tags from the string prior to saving to the database. As a rule of thumb you should never store formatted items in the database, let the formatting happen at the presentation layer. That way when the business rules change, or the data needs to be used in different context, it's easier to adapt.

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I know the language. I've read a book. - _Madmatt

[User 4122428]

Ok, I've narrowed down the question. I have a Regex that matches a naked URL ( http://www.whatever.com/whatever.... ) What I need to know is what to add to the beginning and end of that Regex so that it does not match if there is a double quote right before or after the URL. It's the "NOT QUOTES" thing that I'm not getting.