Wrap character in String, excluding a Link tag with Javascript Regex

Question

EDIT

heres what i have to do...

Imagine if i have a text with some html tags inside it (it is still a string):

var string = \'
Hello, my          


        

Answer 1

Does this solution matches your requirements?

string = string.replace(/a(?![^<]*?>)/g, 'a');

A little help about (?![^<]*?>) (roughly : "some text not followed by >") :

(?!...)   not followed by
[^<]*     any char except "<", zero or more times
?>        until next ">"

Wrapped inside a function :

function replace(html, text, replacement) {
    // RegExp.escape : http://stackoverflow.com/q/3561493/1636522
    var re = new RegExp('(' + RegExp.escape(text) + ')(?![^<]*?>)', 'g');
    return html.replace(re, replacement);
}

var html = ' azerty < azerty ';
html = replace(html, 'azerty', '$1');
// " azerty < azerty "