Split in javascript without tags with specific text

use this :

var str = "<div id = 'tostart'><button>todo </button>hometown todo </div>";
var res = str.replace(/to/g, '|').replace(/(.*?)(<.*?)\|(.*?>)/g, '$1$2to$3');
console.log(res.split("\|"));

output :

["<div id = 'tostart'><button>", "do </button>home", "wn ", "do </div>"]

@musefan:

This is actually done as an improvisation .

first I replaced all the to with | and then I selected all the pipes which were inside the < or > and replaced them with to. Finally I could split on the basis of the | which were left over by the previous replace.

regex : (.*?)(<.*?)\|(.*?>)

will select all | characters which are inside < and >

This is a very quick and dirty function that will do what you want. Note that there is probably a more efficient way to do this, and also that it does not cater for any > characters that might be part of an attribute value. However, it does work for your example input:

function splitNonTag(input, splitText) {
    var inTag = false;//flag to check if we are in a tag or not
    var result = [];//array for storing results
    var temp = "";//string to store current result

    for (var i = 0; i < input.length; i++) {
        var c = input[i];//get the current character to process

        //check if we are not in a tag and have found a split match
        if (!inTag && input.substring(i).indexOf(splitText) == 0) {
            result.push(temp);//add the split data to the results
            temp = "";//clear the buffer ready for next set of split data
            i += splitText.length - 1;//skip to the end of the split delimiter as we don't keep this data
            continue;//continue directly to next iteration of for loop
        }

        temp += c;//append current character to buffer as this is part of the split data

        //check if we are entering, or exiting a tag and set the flag as needed
        if (c == '<') inTag = true;
        else if (c == '>') inTag = false;
    }
    //if we have any left over buffer data then this should become the last split result item
    if (temp) 
        result.push(temp);

    return result;
}
var input = "<div id = 'tostart'><button>todo </button>hometown todo </div>";
var result = splitNonTag(input, 'to');
console.log(result);

Here is a working example