#ID-selector inconsistent

[pcvandam@…]

In the theoretical case you have multiple elements on a page with the same ID, the following selectors give different results:

$('#id') $('div#id')

The first selector only returns the first occurence of the id, while the second will return a set of all elements with that id.

They should behave the same.

[pcvandam@…]

jsFiddle-example:

 http://jsfiddle.net/y59Q7/

[rwaldron]

Why would ever have >1 element with the same ID?

[pcvandam@…]

That's not the point.

Of course it shouldn't happen, but with dynamically generated content it CAN happen. Fact is jQuery does not handle ID-selectors consistently.

[rwaldron]

Actually, it is:  http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/elements.html#the-id-attribute

If you write unexpected code, unexpected things happen.

Of course it shouldn't happen, but with dynamically generated content it CAN happen. Fact is jQuery does not handle ID-selectors consistently.

If this is an issue, the problem is not jQuery, it is the code that is dynamically generating elements that share IDs. The obvious approach is to write tests for your code that assert no duplicate IDs are created.

[rwaldron]

Just so you get a clearer picture, the "inconsistency" isn't jQuery's fault either:  http://jsfiddle.net/rwaldron/JZ8GX/