Vwwxrf

A user wrote an issue asking if inside the bio (or any arbitrary tag), any tagged accounts can be automatically linked like on Github.

I gave them this function:

 <script>
 let bio = "The coolest company to work for is @github! There is also @aws and @microsoft.";
 let linkedBio = "";
 let found = false;
 let link = "";
 for (let i = 0; i < bio.length; i++) 
 let currentChar = bio[i];

 if (currentChar.startsWith("@")) 
 link += currentChar;
 found = true;
 continue // we don't need to look at other chars until next iterations
 

 if (found) 
 if (/[^A-Za-z0-9]/.test(currentChar)) // we found the end of the link (you can add more special chars to this)
 let tag = "<a href=https://github.com/" + link.substr(1) + ">" + link + "</a>"
 linkedBio += tag + currentChar // we add the special char at the end of the tag so that it actually appears, otherwise it does not
 link = "";
 found = false;
 else 
 link += currentChar;
 
 else 
 linkedBio += currentChar;
 
 

 if (link.length > 0) // means we need to add a link that is the last possible thing without anything after it
 let tag = "<a href=https://github.com/" + link.substr(1) + ">" + link + "</a>"
 linkedBio += tag
 

 document.getElementById("bio").innerHTML = linkedBio
 </script>

I was going to use string.split(" "), but then I realized that if I did that I would destroy the specific formatting of the text if I used array.join(" ") after all of the formatting changes.

Ex:
Original: "I work for the coolest companies: @aws, @microsoft, and @apple"

Joined: "I work for the coolest companies: @aws , @microsoft , and @apple"

The commas are messed up.

Is there a way to slim it down and/or simplify it? JS isn't my strongest language.

The function you want is replace:

function link_ats(text) 
 return text.replace( /@(w+)/g, '<a href=https://github.com/$1>@$1</a>' ) 


document.getElementById("bio").innerHTML = link_ats("The coolest company to work for is @github! There is also @aws and @microsoft.", "bio");