Gizmo,
1. The perl script excels at the detecting verses part, via a regex. However, it was not a database-driven script in the least, and currently has no database-related code.
It does use an external file which is basically a tab-delimited list of Bible books and their potential representations (e.g. abbreviations, alternate names/spellings, etc.).
2. I have zero experience in PHP when it comes to writing it myself from scratch--I would just rather use Perl. I have some (a couple eight-hour days' worth) PHP experience in terms of editing existing PHP to perform some modifications of my own (such as adding some Qmail functions to Webmin).
The admin of the UBB forum where I participate has not opened it up for me to access--and perhaps he cannot share any of the files with me for the same reasons you have stated above. I understand the need to protect your software with a license, but this does make development difficult.
This script could work in more than one way. It could be applied to new posts as they are being received into the DB, such that scripture references were converted to links before insertion into the DB. In that case, the actual posts would be altered, however, and the feature would not be able to be switched off from old posts later. I would rather not change actual posts.
The way I would recommend this working is to simply parse the server output before going to the browser, and adding the links on the fly. This would not require any special arrangement with the DB, it would merely act as a filter on output.
