Regex question

[Jezternz]

Ok, basically I am currently building a kind of script editor, and I want smart highlighting, so as the user types I want to highlight specific words and symbols.
I also want this to be realtime.
So as the user types the innerHTML property is updated using the string replace method. So say I want to change all 'me' s with '<span style="color:wh ite">me</span>'

I would use:

editable_div.innerHTML = editable_div.innerHTM.replace(/me/gi, "<span style=\"color:white\">me</span>");

The only problem with this offcourse is, that as you type, every me will get another set of tags, so after 3 edits after a me has been replaced, the html will end up as:

<span style="color:white"><span style="color:white"><span style="color:white">me</span></span></span>

So I need to know how to basically say "If a span isn't already around this portion of the string add a span, otherwise do not match the regular expression".

Thanks, Josh

[Jezternz]

Well I have found that you can use the expression found here:

http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_regexp_modifier_neglookahead.asp

/regexp(?!ahead)/

I am really not sure if this can be done in other regular expression evaluation engines (as I couldn't find it in Google under general regex), but it seems to work in javascript.

[acoder]

For regular expressions, you should find this site useful.

[EisBear]

Or this:

http://help.dottoro.com/ljarccdp.php