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Discover how to use regex in JavaScript to format text by making specific words bold when wrapped in exclamation marks.
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/64523783/ asked by the user 'Leo Messi' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/9099077/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/64523895/ provided by the user 'Thân LƯƠNG Đình' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/10709675/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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Enhance Your Text with Regex: Making Words Bold Between Exclamation Marks

In the world of web development, presenting text in a visually engaging manner can significantly enhance user experience. One common requirement is to format specific parts of text - a need that can be elegantly met using Regular Expressions (regex). This blog will guide you through using regex to make text bold when it is enclosed in exclamation marks, addressing common challenges that developers may encounter along the way.

The Problem: Styling Text Based on Excitement

Imagine you have a text input, and you want to highlight certain words by making them bold if they are surrounded by exclamation marks. For instance, a string like a!a!bb!c!c should display as a**a**bb**c**c, with the words 'a' and 'c' highlighted in bold. Initially, you might think to employ regex for this task, but problems can arise when dealing with spaces or non-contiguous strings.

Example Input:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Expected Output:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

The Solution: Using Regex to Add Styling

To tackle this problem effectively, let's dive into the regex strategy. Here’s how to rewrite the regex pattern to capture words, even when they contain spaces.

Step-by-Step Breakdown

Escape Characters:

First things first, there's no need to escape the exclamation mark !. It can be used as is in the regex query.

Adjusting the Pattern:

The original pattern !(\w+ )! only matched alphanumeric characters. Since you want to include spaces, you'll want to change that to !([^!]+ )!, which captures everything that is not an exclamation mark, regardless of spaces.

The New Regex Pattern

Using the adjustments above, your regex pattern should look like this:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Implementation in JavaScript

Now, let's see how this regex solution can be implemented in a simple JavaScript code snippet:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Explanation of the Code

Text Input: This is your original string, which contains the text you want to format.

Condition Check: The if statement checks if the string includes any exclamation marks, ensuring that we only proceed if there's text to format.

Regex Replace: The replace method utilizes our new regex to find and replace text. Anything between exclamation marks gets wrapped in <b> tags, making it bold in HTML.

Conclusion

By using regex effectively, you can make certain words bold based on exclamation marks without worrying about spaces breaking your logic. This approach provides a straightforward method to enhance your text input dynamically, ensuring a better visual experience for users.

Now you can easily integrate this functionality into your web applications, making them both interactive and visually appealing! Happy coding!