regex help please

I'm trying to write a regex to perform a bbcode replace for a live preview in an editor. I'm using the typical - string - formatting for the bbcode. I have tried the following as a basic example, but it did not work as I expected.

var re = /([b])(.*?)([\/b])/gis;
var newStr = newBrief.replace(re, '<b>$2</b>') ;

TIA

Nick

1. Have a look at those flags. 's' is not a regex flag in JavaScript.
2. Remember that brackets [] are special characters. You need to escape them.

You could always have a look at my regex tutorial. Links are in my sig.

I have tried a few things and this is where I have got to -
function toggleEditorPreview()
{
if (document.getElementById('previewPane').style.display == 'none')
{
var previewPane = document.getElementById('previewPane');
var newBrief = document.getElementById('largeBriefs').value;

var re = /(\[b\])(.*?)(\[\/b\])/gi;
var newStr = newBrief.replace(re, '<b>$2</b>') ;

re = /(\[i\])(.*?)(\[\/i\])/gi;
newStr = newStr.replace(re, '<i>$2</i>') ;

re = /(\[u\])(.*?)(\[\/u\])/gi;
newStr = newStr.replace(re, '<u>$2</u>') ;

re = /(\[t\])/gi;
newStr = newStr.replace(re, '&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;') ;

re = /(\[pb\])/gi;
newStr = newStr.replace(re, '<hr style="page-break-before:always;" />') ;

re = new RegExp("(\n)", "gi");
newStr = newStr.replace(re, '<br />') ;

previewPane.innerHTML = newStr;
document.getElementById('editorPane').style.display = 'none';
document.getElementById('previewPane').style.display = 'block';
}
else
{
document.getElementById('previewPane').style.display = 'none';
document.getElementById('editorPane').style.display = 'block';
}
}

This works fine in all of our test browsers, except for IE5 on Mac OS9.2 and IE5.2 on Mac OSX. I have searched around the net trying to find a solution, but not got very far.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

TIA
Nick

Non-greedy quantifiers were introduced with the JScript 5.5 engine on windows - ie5.5w, that is. The ie5m JScript engine is the same as the engine in ie5.0w. May that be the problem source?

Thank you. Have got it working, though not quite as desired - the joys of having to accommodate IE5M users.

Thanks again

Incidentally (might be relevant) mac/ie5 has some fairly serious issues with regular expression handling:

- IE5.0 (for OS9 or earlier) doesn't properly garbage collect the RegExp constructor, so if you're iterating more than a few times you may get an "out of memory" error; you can avoid that by using a regex literal:

if( /[pattern]/i.test(refToString) ) ...

- MSN for OSX has either a memory leak, or possibly over-zealous error handling - if you try to test() an empty string it abandons the script with another "out of memory" error; so for safety:

if(refToString && /[pattern]/i.test(refToString) ) ...