Only one item returned despite global modifier use in Regex

Question

I'm using the javascript code below trying to extract the number after gallery-entry_ in the html markup below but instead of giving all matches it only returns the first one despite my use of the g modifier in the regex. Any idea why ?

<script type="text/javascript">
    var _gallery = jQuery('ul.gallery').html();
    var _pat = /"gallery-entry_([0-9]+)"/gim;
    var _items   = _pat.exec(_gallery);
    alert('str='+_items[0]); // shows str="gallery-entry_1"
    alert('item #1='+_items[1]); // shows item #1=1
    alert('total='+_items.length); // shows total=2
</script>

Here's the markup:

<ul class="gallery">
<li id="gallery-entry_1"><a href="" title=""><img src="" width="116" height="116" alt=""></a></li>
    <li id="gallery-entry_2"><a href="" title=""><img src="" width="116" height="116" alt=""></a></li>
    <li id="gallery-entry_6"><a href="" title=""><img src="" width="116" height="116" alt=""></a></li>
    <li id="gallery-entry_10"><a href="" title=""><img src="" width="116" height="116" alt=""></a></li>
    <li id="gallery-entry_14"><a href="" title=""><img src="" width="116" height="116" alt=""></a></li>
    <li id="gallery-entry_22"><a href="" title=""><img src="" width="116" height="116" alt=""></a></li>
    <li id="gallery-entry_30"><a href="" title=""><img src="" width="116" height="116" alt=""></a></li>
    <li id="gallery-entry_31"><a href="" title=""><img src="" width="116" height="116" alt=""></a></li>         
</ul>

Answer 1

exec always returns one item.

You can use exec in a loop, or use String.prototype.match() instead.

_gallery.match(_pat);

That said, it doesn't seem like a very good choice to use a regex to get the data you want.

If you want the IDs, use .map().

var _items = $('ul.gallery > li').map(function(i,el) {
                                          return el.id;
                                     }).toArray();