Topic: Regex Help.. not working :(

Hey folks.

Basically i want a regex for javascript that will replace any html tags in a string with their lowercase versions.

So far i have

clipHtml = clipHtml.replace(/(<\/?[^>]*>)/g, '$1'.toLowerCase())

The first part of the expression is correct and matches any tags, but the second part doesnt seem to be working. Most sites i've seen say to use $1 or \$1 or \1 or various other things to put the matched express into the replace-with part of the javascript expression.


Any ideas?

Thanks.

(Edited by H][RO on 04-12-2006 07:18)

Hm... As far as I see it, you're lowercasing '$1',
which is only afterwards expanded to the full string.

So... try defining a function lowerThat ( str)
return str.toLowerCase()

and pass that to replace.
That way, you'll actually pass in a function, instead of a string, and that's what you want.

mmm, yeh i ended up just doing

clipHtml = clipHtml.replace(/(<\/?[^>]*>)/g, function(x){return x.toLowerCase()})

i thought it should have worked even if its expanding it afterwards, it wasnt including the string method in the result or anything.

Oh well

Oh, it was. But '$1' toLowerCase() is still just '$1'.
If you had replaced with "ABCD".toLowerCase() you would have seen it.

Remember functions are being evaluated from the inner to the outer.