Need to trim a url. what's the best way of doing it?

[londrum]

hello. got a little problem, hoping someone can help me...

i need to find a way to shorten a text string (which is basically just a url), so that it just says the domain name.
but they are always in different formats though...

http://example.com
http://www.example.com
http://www.example.com/example/
http://www.example.com/example/example.html
http://www.example.com/?a=example

is there a way of shortening them all to just this instead

example.com

using preg_replace, or something like that? i have been fiddling around with it, but the random nature of the urls is throwing me.

[cameraman]

How about parse_url [us2.php.net]($url,PHP_URL_HOST)

[londrum]

...perfect, cheers. and as easy as that!