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Regular Expression Needed For finding words but not words inside HTML

I have a regular expression that simply replaces a given word with the the same word surrounded by a SPAN tag to highlight it, like this:

oRegExp.Pattern = "(" & aSearch(nTerm) & ")"
sArticle = oRegExp.Replace(sArticle,"<span style=""background-color:#FFFF00"">$1</span>")

The problem is, if someone searches for something that is within an HTML tag, like if they search for SPAN, then it busts up the HTML. So... I need a new regular expression that only finds the keywords if they NOT with < > tags.

Am I wanting too must from a regular expression? Should I do this some other way that would be more efficient?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

ddrudik

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Xponex

ASKER

Perfect solution, worked great, thank you.

Xponex

ASKER

Now, can you explain exactly WHY this works? I know that's not part of the question, but... I'd like to know for future knowledge.

ddrudik

Thanks for the question and the points.

I put "test" in the pattern and here's the explanation:

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test 'test'
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(?! look ahead to see if there is not:
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[^<>]* any character except: '<', '>' (0 or
more times (matching the most amount
possible))
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> '>'
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) end of look-ahead
----------------------------------------------------------------------