javascript string replace &lt; into <

Hey all, I basically output content into a div like this using jquery:

var text = $("#edit").val();
$("#output").text(text);

But I want to turn "&lt;" and "&gt;" into "<" and ">".

text.replace(/&lt;/,"<"); doesn't seem to be working for me...

Any ide开发者_如何学编程as? Many thanks

You could use something like the unescapeHTML() function in prototype...

Adapted from prototype js source

function unescapeHTML(escapedHTML) {
  return escapedHTML.replace(/&lt;/g,'<').replace(/&gt;/g,'>').replace(/&amp;/g,'&');
}

Simple.

var needToConvert = 'But I want to turn "&lt;" and "&gt;" into "<" and ">".';

var convert = function(convert){
    return $("<span />", { html: convert }).text();
    //return document.createElement("span").innerText;
};

alert(convert(needToConvert));

You need use .html() Because text() converts all html tags

$("#output").html(text);

assign it to variable:

var text = $("#edit").val();
text = text.replace("&lt;","<");

this will work fine