title: count number of links in textarea using jquery
body: <p>I am trying to count the number of links in a textarea so I can limit the user to no more than three links. The code below is what I have so far, but it's not working. I am thinking the html is encoded and that is affecting it somehow ...or maybe not. If so, can I decode it? Any ideas? Thanks so much.</p>
  
  <pre><code>$(document).ready(function() {
      $('#box-text').keyup(function() {
              var links = $('#box-text a');
              var total_links=0;
              for(var i = 0; i &lt; links.length; i++) {
                  total_links++;
              }
              alert("links =  " + total_links);
      });
  });
  </code></pre>