I'm trying to reformat Slack formatting to bbcode and need a little help. Slack does italics like this:
_this is italic_ and this isn't
My current expression (/\_([^\_]*)\_/gm) works but unfortunately picks up underscores in URLs and inside code snippets. Slack formats URLs and code like this:
<www.thislink.com|here's a link>
`here's a code snippet`
How can I tell regex not to match any underscore pairs inside a link or code snippet? I've been trying negative lookahead and lookbehind but without success.
You need to match and capture what you need and just match what you do not need.
Once you get a match, analyze it and implement the appropriate code logic:
const re = /<[^<>|]*(?:\|[^<>]*)?>|`[^`]*`|_([^_]*)_/g;
const text = "<www.thislink.com|here's a link>\n`here's a code snippet`\n_this is italic_ and this isn't";
console.log( text.replace(re, (m,g) => g !== undefined ? "[i]" + g + "[/i]" : m ) )See the regex demo. Details:
<[^<>|]*(?:\|[^<>]*)?> - a <, then zero or more chars other than <, > and |, then an optional sequence of a | and then zero or more chars other than < and > and then a > char| - or`[^`]*` - a backtick, zero or more chars other than a backtick and a backtick| - or_([^_]*)_ - _, Group 1: zero or more chars other than _, a _.