contains selector using non-breaking space doesn't work in IE7

JQuery fails to select a td element that contains a non-breaking space, for IE7.

eg: $('td:contains(" ")').addClass("otherTest");

This functionality works fine in Firefox 3.

Attachments (1)

test-3450.html (0.8 KB) - added by dmethvin July 26, 2010 03:00AM UTC.

Shows diff btwn .innerText and .text()

Change History (3)

component:	unfilled → selector

I cannot create any test using Firefox or IE that selects something with

:contains(" ")

and I am not convinced it should work anyway. The

contains

argument looks at the element's text (using

.textContent

.innerText

). The selector string is handled by Javascript and so doesn't get HTML entities processed.

If anything, the selector should be

:contains("\\u00a0")

and that does work on Firefox. However, it still does not work in IE7 or IE8. The problem is that IE's

.innerText

property returns the non-breaking space as \\u0020 instead of \\u00a0, and that is what Sizzle tries first.

One fix would be to use Sizzle's getText function instead of trying innerText at all, but that could be significantly slower.

resolution:	→ invalid
status:	new → closed

The ticket as described is invalid because :contains functions on text content, not HTML.

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