I'm trying to convert square brackets on a form submit. I won't go into the form submission part as it's not required.

I had no problem replacing a new line with a <br /> tag like so:

new_line = message.replace(/\n/g, "<br />");

however what I'm trying to achieve now is convert [b] [/b] to <strong> </strong>. This is what I have tried so far but it doesn't seem to be working. I find regex's rather hard to grasp.

bold = message.replace(/\[b].*\[\/b]/g, '<strong>');

Can someone please point me in the right direction?

I'm trying to convert square brackets on a form submit. I won't go into the form submission part as it's not required.

I had no problem replacing a new line with a <br /> tag like so:

new_line = message.replace(/\n/g, "<br />");

however what I'm trying to achieve now is convert [b] [/b] to <strong> </strong>. This is what I have tried so far but it doesn't seem to be working. I find regex's rather hard to grasp.

bold = message.replace(/\[b].*\[\/b]/g, '<strong>');

Can someone please point me in the right direction?

• javascript
• jquery
• regex

Share Improve this question Follow asked Sep 23, 2013 at 4:27 LodderLodder 19.8k1111 gold badges6363 silver badges102102 bronze badges

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2 Answers 2

Sorted by: Reset to default 4

Try this one...

bold = message.replace(/\[b\](.*?)\[\/b\]/g, '<strong>$1</strong>');

Try

'[b]asdf[/b]'.replace(/\[(\/?)b\]/g, '<$1strong>')