Regular expression, BB code

[wysiwyg]

Hi,
I'm trying to make something like a wysiwyg-editor, and I'm using JS reg exp to preview the stuff that you type in in a div.

I've managed to fix the easy parts, links a bold text, but I can't seem to get unordered lists to work. I want the syntax to be:

[un-list]
* First item
[/un-list]

And it's working, as long as I only have one list item. Can anyone help me with som regexp for this? And I'd really like to learn regexp, so explainations and links to further reading is appreciated!

[wysiwyg]

I've gotten as far as this:
text = text.replace( new RegExp( /\[un-list\]([^\[]+)\[\/un-list\]/gi ), '<ul>$1</ul>' );
text = text.replace( new RegExp( /\*([^\*]+)/g ), '<li>$1</li>' );

And it works, but if there is a * outside of an ul, it puts <li> around it, which of course it shouldn't. I've tried to only capture * inside <ul>, but can't make it work. Does anyone know how?

And if my code is bad or ugly, please correct me.

[kyberfabrikken]

Regular expressions are stateless. They can't be used alone on something with a context. You can use the regex to tokenize the input, then run it through a state machine, to do the processing.

If you don't mind using a fairly standardized syntax, rather than inventing your own, I'll suggest showdown, which is a javascript implementation of markdown.

[joebert]

I gave up on bbcode, I look at it like flying to a world famous cheese store in the United States to get some Swiss cheese, when living in Switzerland.

I think time would be much better spent cleaning HTML input up than it would be trying to re-invent the wheel with bbcode.

[wysiwyg]

Well, I feel like giving up to, but I suppose this is a good opportunity to really learn regexp.

So how do I use a grouped negated character class? This: x[^y] matches "x if it has anything but a y after it". But how do I do:
\*([^\*|<\/ul>]+)? I want to match everything after a *, except another *, or a </ul>. I need to group <\/ul>, but I don't know how? I tried: \*([^\*|(<\/ul>)]+) but with no luck.

[Kravvitz]

Sounds like you want a "negative lookahead".