Question

I am making a simple JavaScript based WYSIWYG editor using regular expressions to do the conversion to html.

This is the javascript conversion method I am using

message = message.replace(/\*\*(.*)\*\*/g, "<b>$1</b>");

It converts text surrounded with two ** to bold.
The issue is that it does not do that for every instance.
Instead it does it from the first instance of ** to the last.

So **bold text** **bold text**

Gives me

bold text* *bold text

<b>bold text* *bold text</b>

Instead of

<b>bold text</b> <b>bold text</b>

How can I set it up to convert each instance instead of grouping them together?

Answer 1

You need to change the quantifier to .*? to make it not greedy:

message = message.replace(/\*\*(.*?)\*\*/g, "<b>$1</b>");
//                                ^