[javascript] JavaScript replace/regex

Given this function:

function Repeater(template) {

    var repeater = {

        markup: template,

        replace: function(pattern, value) {
            this.markup = this.markup.replace(pattern, value);
        }

    };

    return repeater;

};

How do I make this.markup.replace() replace globally? Here's the problem. If I use it like this:

alert(new Repeater("$TEST_ONE $TEST_ONE").replace("$TEST_ONE", "foobar").markup);

The alert's value is "foobar $TEST_ONE".

If I change Repeater to the following, then nothing in replaced in Chrome:

function Repeater(template) {

    var repeater = {

        markup: template,

        replace: function(pattern, value) {
            this.markup = this.markup.replace(new RegExp(pattern, "gm"), value);
        }

    };

    return repeater;

};

...and the alert is $TEST_ONE $TEST_ONE.

In terms of pattern interpretation, there's no difference between the following forms:

• /pattern/
• new RegExp("pattern")

If you want to replace a literal string using the replace method, I think you can just pass a string instead of a regexp to replace.

Otherwise, you'd have to escape any regexp special characters in the pattern first - maybe like so:

function reEscape(s) {
    return s.replace(/([.*+?^$|(){}\[\]])/mg, "\\$1");
}

// ...

var re = new RegExp(reEscape(pattern), "mg");
this.markup = this.markup.replace(re, value);

Your regex pattern should have the g modifier:

var pattern = /[somepattern]+/g;

notice the g at the end. it tells the replacer to do a global replace.

Also you dont need to use the RegExp object you can construct your pattern as above. Example pattern:

var pattern = /[0-9a-zA-Z]+/g;

a pattern is always surrounded by / on either side - with modifiers after the final /, the g modifier being the global.

EDIT: Why does it matter if pattern is a variable? In your case it would function like this (notice that pattern is still a variable):

var pattern = /[0-9a-zA-Z]+/g;
repeater.replace(pattern, "1234abc");

But you would need to change your replace function to this:

this.markup = this.markup.replace(pattern, value);