how to split a string

[eluser]n0xie[/eluser]
Not to sound like a total idiot but, isn't it easier to do this with CSS...?

[eluser]jedd[/eluser]
Very probably - I don't know enough CSS to comment. Could you demonstrate with some code?

Would it work for non-contiguous spans/divs/whatever you're talking about?

Obviously it fails if you want to prepare for non-HTML output, but that's pretty rare around these parts.