Replace text in html string

Question

I'm trying to write a regular expression for following criteria

The source string might optionally contain an html code. Which should be preserved, everything outside tag should replace with a static text.

function replaceCode( mystring ){
    var replaceWith = "Hello!!!" ;
    //do something with mystring here..
}

var string1 = "<span>Title</span> A small note" ;
var string2 = "Another big note" ;

alert( replaceCode(string1) ) ;
alert( replaceCode(string2) ) ;

Resultant strings must be

//string1 must become
<span>Title</span> Hello!!!

//string2 must become
Hello!!!

Answer 1

You may do following:

var yourString = "<span>Title</span> any text to replace";
var yourReplacement = "Hello!";

//Split by html tags
var tokens = yourString.split(/<\w+>\w+<\/\w+>/);

for (var i = 0; i < tokens.lenght; i++) {
   yourString = yourString.replace(tokens[i], yourReplacement);
}

This, however, is probably not the best solution and will not work for nested tags but fit your examples.