[Javascript] regexp - how to exclude a substring?

[Paul Novitski]

[Sorry about that: here's the last half of my previous message done 
differently so it won't be rendered as html.  I'll mark up tags like {html} 
instead of using < and >.]


My current strategy is to initialize the template engine by walking the 
document recording the lineage of each element:

{html}                   	0:html
   {body}                 	1:html body
     {div id="content"}   	2:html body div#content
        {h2}              	3:html body div#content h2
        {/h2}
        {p class="intro"} 	4:html body div#content p.intro
          {span}          	5:html body div#content p.intro span
          {/span}
        {/p}
     {/div}
     {ul id="nav" class="menu"}	6:html body ul#nav.menu
...

(I wonder if this is how some rendering engines work internally, so they 
don't have to keep re-parsing the document?)

Then I can search those lineage strings for the matches I want.  Assuming 
that every tag name is preceded by a space, and that #ids come before 
.classes, then this regex should work to pinpoint the desired element:

	/(\d)+:.* div.* p[^ ]*\.intro.* span/
will match:
	div p.intro span
in:
	5:html body div#content p.intro span


Then my parenthetical expression (\d) will yield the key number, n'est ce pas?

Paul