How to fire a function before and after automatically in a jquery plugin?

Why is this jQuery plugin for adding commas in numbers lagging my webpage?

• $.fn.digits = function(){     return this.each(function(){         $(this).text( $(this).text().replace(/(\d)(?=(\d\d\d)+(?!\d))/g, "$1,") );     }) } Call it like this: $("#total").digits(); I think it lags because of me having a couple hundred of these: $("#total").digits(); Is there a way to get rid of that lag?

• Answer:

  Manipulations of the DOM, i.e. modifying the text of elements, moving elements, etc. is slow. Especially if you hundreds of them like you said. Also the fact that you are using replace, i.e. regex, means it has to match every single total. You could have as easy just to string manipulations which would have been more efficient.