Question

<ul id="boxinoamicizie">
  <li class="first">from 
            <a href="users/valerio">valerio</a> 
               (<a href="#">Approve</a>|<a href="#">Disapprove</a>)
  </li>
  <li>from 
            <a href="users/federico">federico</a> 
               (<a href="#">Approve</a>|<a href="#">Disapprove</a>)
  </li>
  <li class="last">from <a href="users/federico">federico</a> 
               (<a href="#">Approve</a>|<a href="#">Disapprove</a>)
  </li>
 </ul>

i need to remove “from” and leave the rest of the string i tried to use

 $('.item-list ul li').each( function(){   
     var text = this.textContent;
     this.textContent = text.replace( /from/g, "" );
  });

but it cancel me “from” and the links from the html code

can somebody give me some help?

EDIT:

the result i need is

<ul id="boxinoamicizie">
 <li class="first">
        <a href="users/valerio">valerio</a> 
           (<a href="#">Approve</a>|<a href="#">Disapprove</a>)
  </li>
  <li>
        <a href="users/federico">federico</a> 
           (<a href="#">Approve</a>|<a href="#">Disapprove</a>)
  </li>
  <li class="last">
        <a href="users/federico">federico</a> 
           (<a href="#">Approve</a>|<a href="#">Disapprove</a>)
 </li>
</ul>

Answer 1

Iterate over the text nodes and remove it if it contains from:

$('.item-list ul li').contents().each(function() {
    if(this.nodeType === 3 && /^\s*from\s*$/.test(this.nodeValue)) {
        this.parentNode.removeChild(this);
    }
});

DEMO

---

The reason why this.textContent = this.textContent.replace( /from/g, "" ) does not give the desired result is simple:

.textContent returns the text of the element and all descendants, i.e. you get

"from valerio (Approve|Disapprove)"

From that string you are removing from and then reassign the result as content to the element. This will replace the current content of the element.

---

You could use $(this).html() instead to work with the HTML content of the element, but if you have event listeners registered with the links, they will be destroyed, as you are destroying and recreating DOM elements.