Find text between two tags/nodes

Question

I thought that this would be rather straightforward, but I think the keywords are just too general so I keep getting query results for things like this and this.

Basical

Answer 1

I know you have already accepted a solution, but I wanted to take the challenge to provide a pure javascript solution which can be incorporated into your toolset. Here's what I came up with, and would like any help to make this better.

http://jsfiddle.net/ryanwheale/JhZPK/

function joinNeighborsByClassName( className ) {
    var items = document.getElementsByClassName(className),
        next = null,
        remove = [],
        append = '',
        i = 0;

    while( i < items.length && (next = items[i++]) ) {
        while( (next = next.nextSibling) && next !== null ) {
            if((next.nodeType === 3  && /^\s+$/.test(next.nodeValue)) ||     
               (new RegExp("(?:^|\s)" + className + "(?!\S)", "g")).test(next.className) ) {
                append += (next.innerHTML || next.nodeValue);

                if(next.nodeType !== 3) {
                    remove.push(next);
                }
            } else {
                break;
            }
        }

        if(append) items[i-1].innerHTML += append;
        for(var n = 0; n < remove.length; n++) {
            remove[n].parentNode.removeChild(remove[n]);
        }

        remove = [];
        append = '';
    }
}

joinNeighborsByClassName('highlighted');