Question

I don’t want to be a help vampire, I’m just asking for a general direction or which technologies would have to be used to make this possible.

I have an a string, something like this:

joke<br>kid<br>forreal<br>me

How would I turn it into something like this:

<a href="http://www.dumbsearch.com/chat/user.php?q=joke">joke</a><br>
<a href="http://www.dumbsearch.com/chat/user.php?q=kid">kid</a><br>
<a href="http://www.dumbsearch.com/chat/user.php?q=forreal">forreal</a><br>
<a href="http://www.dumbsearch.com/chat/user.php?q=me">me</a><br>

Answer 1

What you are looking for is explode.

$string = "...";

// split the string on every "<br>"
$users = explode("<br>", $string);

// loop through the users, adding the anchor
for ($i = 0, $count = count($users); $i < $count; $i++)
{
    echo '<a href="http://www.dumbsearch.com/chat/user.php?q=' . $users[$i] . '">'  . $users[$i] . '</a>';

    // add "<br>" to every user except the last
    if ($i < ($count - 1))
        echo "<br>";
}