Highlighting search term followup

[skyemark]

I'm wondering if anyone has improved the highlight function from thread333-1085319. It doesn't ignore html code (the html breaks if someone searches for "span"). I'd like to use a regexp but don't know how to implement it. Here is the function from that thread:

function highlight(search,andor,text)
    temp = text
    if search <> "" then
    dim RegularExpressionObject
    Set RegularExpressionObject = New RegExp
    if andor = "or" then
        searchStr = split(search," ")
        for each item in searchStr
            With RegularExpressionObject
            .Pattern = "\b"&item&"s?\b"
            .IgnoreCase = True
            .Global = True
            End With
            set Matches = RegularExpressionObject.execute(temp)
            RegularExpressionObject.IgnoreCase = False
			RegularExpressionObject.Global = False
            For Each Match in Matches   ' Iterate Matches collection.
                RegularExpressionObject.Pattern = "\b"&Match.Value&"\b"
                temp = RegularExpressionObject.replace(temp,"<#span class='highlight'>"&(Match.Value)&"<#/span>")
                i=i+1
            Next
        next
    else
        With RegularExpressionObject
        .Pattern = "\b"&search&"s?\b"
        .IgnoreCase = True
        .Global = True
        End With
        set Matches = RegularExpressionObject.execute(temp)
        RegularExpressionObject.IgnoreCase = False
		RegularExpressionObject.Global = False
       For Each Match in Matches   ' Iterate Matches collection.
            RegularExpressionObject.Pattern = "\b"&Match.Value&"\b"
            temp = RegularExpressionObject.replace(temp,"<#span class='highlight'>"&(Match.Value)&"<#/span>")
            i=i+1
        Next
    end if
    end if

    temp = replace(temp,"<#span class='highlight'><#span class='highlight'>","<span class='highlight'>")
    temp = replace(temp,"<#span class='highlight'>","<span class='highlight'>")
    temp = replace(temp,"<#/span><#/span>","<#/span>")
    temp = replace(temp,"<#/span>","</span>")
    
    highlight = temp
end function

Thanks