Using regular Expression to replace emotions character in javascript

Question

I have following JavaScript code.

var emoticons = {
    ':)': '<span class="emoticon emoticon_smile"></span>',
    ':-)': '<span class="emoticon emoticon_smile"></span>',
    ':(': '<span class="emoticon emoticon_sad"></span>',
    ':d': '<span class="emoticon emoticon_bigSmile"></span>',
    ':D': '<span class="emoticon emoticon_bigSmile"></span>'
}

and now to replace the emotion with span in the given text I am using following functions

function Emotions (text) {
    if (text == null || text == undefined || text == "") return;
    var pattern = /[:\-)(D/pPy@'*]+/gi;
    return text.replace(pattern, function (match) {
        return typeof emoticons[match] != 'undefined' ?
           emoticons[match] :
           match;
    });
}

Now the above code is working fine.If I pass the text in the function as below

Emotions("Hey this is a test :( :(");

see the space between 2 emotions character. But if I remove the space between both the emotion then it does not work.Like below

Emotions("Hey this is a test :(:(");

There is something wrong with my regular expression but I am not been able to figure it out.

Answer 1

/:-?[()pPdD]/gi

characters in [] brackets are posibilites and remaining by order

Answer 2

The expression cannot tell that ":(:(" should be treated as two "blocks" since ":(:(" perfectly satisfies your regex pattern.

If you, for example, know that all your emojis start with a colon (:) you could use the following expression to check for emoji "blocks"

:[\-)(D/pPy@'*]+ (the colon is now in front of the character-class)