Question

UPDATE 1:

Really sorry about this, I just realised I made a mistake with the question.

If data = some @text1 here, and @text2 here

It should become

some <a href="http://www.google.com/?q=text1">@text1</a> here, and <a href="http://www.google.com/?q=text2">@text2</a> here

ORIGINAL QUESTION:

Using jQuery AJAX, I am returning data and outputting it like this:

$('.class_name_here').append( data )

Within data I want to be able to search for certain characters, then add urls to them before outputting them, e.g.

lets say data contains

some @test here

I want to find the word which follows after @ and add http://www.google.com to it, so I end up with

some <a href="http://www.google.com">@test</a> here

Answer 1

var str = 'test @google test';
str = str.replace(/(@\w+)/g,'<a href="http://google.com/">$1</a>');
alert(str);

Should work, a simple regex replace. And a nice demo can be found here.

Update:

Try this on for size:

// place somewhere in global scope (in head of document for instance)
String.prototype.addGoogleLinks = function(){
    return this.replace(/(@(\w+))/g,'<a href="http://google.com/?q=$2">$1</a>');
};

// reference the data variable and call the addGoogleLinks()
// which will return the formatted string
data.addGoogleLinks()

That will wrap all @keywords in a <a href="http://google.com/?q=keywords">@keywords</a>, for instance.

Demo of this, too