jquery and RegExp

Question

I build a function thar replace a keyword in the HTML to a link. The problem is that when the keyword is in a link then it will replaced it.

$(document).ready( function () {
    $("#content").highlight( "example", "<a href=\"http://www.example.com\">$1</a>" );});

jQuery.fn.highlight = function (text, o) {
return this.each( function(){
    var replace = o;
    $(this).html( $(this).html().replace( new RegExp('('+text+'(?![\\w\\s?&.\\/;#~%"=-]*>))', "ig"), replace) );
});}

and my HTML

<div id="content">
    <h2>the word "example" replaced by the link</h2>
    <p>this is an example</p>

    <p>this is an example number 2</p>
    <p><a href="http://www.wrong.com">this is an example</a></p>
</div>

Answer 1

I would check each element in the loop to see if it's a anchor tag before doing the replace.

if( !$(this).is('a') ) {
  // Replace Code here
}