Find URL's within an element and wrap them

// 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();