Checking Active Link in Primary link foreach

I need to determine the active link using 4.6 when using the primary foreach loop for a theme so I can make it stand out.

      <?php if (is_array($primary_links)) : ?>
      <ul>
        <?php foreach ($primary_links as $link): ?>
          <li><?php print $link?></li>
        <?php endforeach; ?>
      </ul>
        <?php endif; ?>

I have looked at post (http://drupal.org/node/46020) and it just does not seem to work for me. using $link gives you the url and title, is there a way to just get the actual url out of there so I can compare it against the request_uri