theme_links() override has no effect

Question

So I want menus to output in a custom way. I would not output the following HTML.

<ul attributes>
    <li attributes>
       <a href="foo">foo</a>
    </li>
    <li attributes>
       <a href="bar">bar</a>
    </li>
 </ul>

I would replace it with the following one.

<nav attributes>
   <a attributes href="foo">foo</a>
   <a attributes href="bar">bar</a>
</nav>

So I put in the template.php file the following function (my theme is called mFAC).

function mFAC_links($variables) {
    // custom stuff
}

I am starting with a light alteration, but nothing seems to have any effect. I cleared the cache.

Is there anything I am missing?

Answer 1

You can use YOUR_THEME_menu_tree() for this. You can target it to a specific menu using YOUR_THEME_menu_tree__MENU_NAME(). Make sure you return the variable after alterations. Refer this for more details.

Answer 2

You can override the menu wrapper in this manner:

function YOURTHEME_menu_tree__MENU_NAME($variables) {
  return '<nav class="menu'.$variables['delta'].'">' . $variables['tree'] . '</nav>';
}