Can I use a regex and foo.replace() to substitute occurances of a string that aren't in anchor tag?

I'm trying to use JavaScript to replace target text with a hyperlinked version of the target text. Generally speaking, this is the function in question:

    function replace_text_in_editor(target_text, target_type, target_slug) {
        //if target_text was "Google", then the replacement_text might be "<a href="/path/to/google">Google</a>
        var replacement_text = get_replacement_text(target_text, target_type, target_slug);
        if(typeof replacement_text != undefined && replacement_text != '') {
            var content = '';
            content = jQuery( "#content" ).val();
            content = content.replace(target_text,replacement_text)
            if(content != '') {
                jQuery( "#content" ).val(content);
            }
        }
    }

I've tried a couple permutations of the following line, which I'd like to alert to only replace text that's not already hyperlinked.

开发者_如何学JAVAvar regex = "/" + target_text + "/";
content = content.replace(regex,replacement_text);

Example attempt:

var regex = "/^(<a.*?>)" + target_text + "^(<\/a>)/";

Can someone please correct me with a regex showing how I should be doing this? No need to explain what the regex does step by step, as I can infer that from the design. Thank you!

---

I think you want this but I'm not sure that I compeletly understand.

If you use RE to find the text you can assign it to group $1 by putting () around it (in this case "Google").

Then when you go to replace it you build the expression with that group assignment id $1

\<a href="$1\.com"\>$1\<\/a\>