RegExp to replace every second asterisk?

Question

I have a string, e.g.:

"The red letters in the following words are suffixes: beauti*ful*, speech*less* and invinc*ible*."

I want to replace the first of each ** pair with <span class='red'> and the second with </span>. I can do this in a for loop, but would like to know how to do it with RegExp.

Answer 1

How about:

s = s.replace(/\*([^*]*)\*/g, "<span class='red'>$1</span>");

\*([^*]*)\* is a little confusing, it searches for:

• \* - the first asterisk
• ([^*]*) - the content between the asterisks (captures, so we can replace using $1.
• \* - the second asterisk

Working example: http://jsbin.com/isufes