Question

I am trying to find // (slashes) in the document and wrap it with a span.

I’ve tried

var slashes = "//";
/slashes+/

So output should be:

Hello There! I Am <span class="slashes">//</span> An Alien

With jQuery .replace() and :contains but nothing happens, and I am new to reguler expressions to do this correctly. How would I do this?

Edit: What have I tried:
Solution for this question didn’t work:

function slashes($el) {

   $el.contents().each(function () {
       dlbSlash = "//";
       if (this.nodeType == 3) { // Text only
           $(this).replaceWith($(this).text()
               .replace(/(dlbSlash)/gi, '<span class="slashes">$1</span>'));
       } else { // Child element
           slashes($(this));
       }

   });
}

slashes($("body"));

Answer 1

You need to escape the slashes in your regex. Try

var mystring = "adjfadfafdas//dsagdsg//dsafda"
mystring.replace(/\/\//g,'<span class="slashes">\/\/</span>');

Should output

"adjfadfafdas<span class="slashes">//</span>dsagdsg<span class="slashes">//</span>dsafda"

If you want to replace the slashes in h2 and p tags, you can loop through them like so:

$('h2, p').each(function(i, elem) { 
    $(elem).text(
        $(elem).text().replace(/\/\//g,'<span class="slashes">\/\/</span>'));
});

This will blow away any additional html tags you may have had in your p and h2 tags, though.