allow user to add a delimiter to the text() function

[aklimchak]

If I want to get all of the text from a series of elements, I would think that this function should allow me to delimit them. This could be an optional parameter. As an example:

<span>1</span> <span>2</span> <span>3</span>

$("span").text(); would function as it always has

$("span").text("|"); would output "1|2|3"

$("span").text(" * "); would output "1 * 2 * 3"

[aklimchak]

I'm new to jQuery and I just figured out how to get my intended result.

$("span").append("|").text();

However, that alters the page. So maybe this is still legit, maybe not.

[techtangents]

For your workaround, rather than mutating each element, use 'map' to get a jQuery object of each of the texts, then 'join' to make a delimited string:

var x = $("span").map(function() {

return $(this).text();

}).toArray().join(",");

I think that the delimiter is just one of a series of set-based things you might want to do on the texts of a set of elements. Rather than adding a delimiter, it'd be better to have something that gets you an array or jq object... then you can do whatever you want with it.

I'd probably go for something like this:

var mytexts = $(myselector).texts()

mytexts would then be a jquery object containing the text of each element. This could be implemented thus:

$.fn.texts = function() {

return $(e).map(function() {

return $(this).text();

});

}

Then, for your scenario, do this:

var x = e.texts().toArray().join(",");

I think the default behavior of text() concatenating the text of each element is a little bit weird - it comes from a jquery object representing a set of elements, but text() kinda only applies to a single element... so, yeah, the behavior when there's multiple elements is always going to be a bit weird. I think if you have an operation on a set, you should really return a set.

So, yeah, it's a bit weird... but I'm not sure that adding a delimiter parameter is the way to do. Given that there's a very simple workaround, there's probably no need to change jquery.

Options:

1. Leave as is.
2. Implement the delimit functionality, as described by the ticket.
3. Add texts(), which returns a jquery object of the text of each element, as I've described.

[dmethvin]

This is a great forum discussion topic. It seems there are plenty of existing solutions so I'll close this bug report.