Javascript Regexp exec method - only 1 result?

[dawbin]

Trying what I thought was a simple way to extract html tags. In this example I'm expecting an array with 4 elements but I get only one... am I missing something?

var htm="<a></a><b></b>";   
var patt = /<.*?>/gim;
var a = patt.exec(htm);
alert(JSON.stringify(a));       

Expected:

["<a>","</a>","<b>","</b>"]

But I get:

["<a>"]

[diafol]

Can.t you just use:

document.body.getElementsByTagName('*')

[Johnny1]

You need to add parentheses around the "tags" so that they get captured. Try:
var patt = /(<.*?>)/gim;

[dawbin]

That changes the result to ["<a>","<a>"] - makes no sense to me... it should return all matches right?

var htm="<a></a><b></b>";   
var patt = /(<.*?>)/gim;
var a = patt.exec(htm);
alert(JSON.stringify(a));       

[Johnny1]

try:

    var htm="<a></a><b></b>";   
    var patt = /(<[^>]+>)/g; //[^>] means anything that is NOT ">"
    var a = patt.exec(htm);
    alert(JSON.stringify(a));