String splitting without loosing punctuation marks

[Anat]

Hi,
I need a little help on performing string manipulation:
I want to take a given string, and make certain words hyperlinks.
For example:
"Hello world, this is a wonderful day!"
I'd like the words world & and day to be hyperlinks, therefore
after my manipulation it should be:
"Hello <a href=...>world</a>, this is a wonderful <a href=...>day</a>!"
Using split method is not good, because splitting with regex each
punctuation mark causes the commas and other punctuation marks to
disappear.
Instead of displaying
"Hello <a href=...>world</a>, this is a wonderful <a href=...>day</a>!"
I will display
"Hello <a href=...>world</a> this is a wonderful <a href=...>day</a>"
(note that the comma and exclamation mark are gone).
Any ideas on how I can locate words, replace them but not loose
punctuation marks on the way?
Thanks a lot!!!
Anat.

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

"Anat" <an********@ver int.com> writes:

"Hello world, this is a wonderful day!"
I'd like the words world & and day to be hyperlinks, therefore
after my manipulation it should be:
"Hello <a href=...>world</a>, this is a wonderful <a href=...>day</a>!"
.... and these words were chosen because they are just before
punctuation, I guess.
Using split method is not good, because splitting with regex each
punctuation mark causes the commas and other punctuation marks to
disappear.
Instead of displaying
"Hello <a href=...>world</a>, this is a wonderful <a href=...>day</a>!"
I will display
"Hello <a href=...>world</a> this is a wonderful <a href=...>day</a>"
(note that the comma and exclamation mark are gone).
If you want to replace parts of a string ... use the replace function:

string.replace(/\b(\w+)([.,!?])/g, "<a href=\"...\">$1 <\/a>$2")
Any ideas on how I can locate words, replace them but not loose
punctuation marks on the way?

Replace and keep the punctuation mark in the replacement.

/L
--
Lasse Reichstein Nielsen - lr*@hotpop.com
DHTML Death Colors: <URL:http://www.infimum.dk/HTML/rasterTriangleD OM.html>
'Faith without judgement merely degrades the spirit divine.'

[Tony]

Anat wrote:

Hi,
I need a little help on performing string manipulation:
I want to take a given string, and make certain words hyperlinks.
For example:
"Hello world, this is a wonderful day!"
I'd like the words world & and day to be hyperlinks, therefore
after my manipulation it should be:
"Hello <a href=...>world</a>, this is a wonderful <a href=...>day</a>!"

Just curious - why do you want to do this with javascript? Is there a
reason you can't output it this way in the first place?

As for how, I see someone has already provided the same suggestion I
would - split on the spaces.