.after and .before returns incorrect data for $('not_existing_element')

[yurk]

$('existing_element').after('<h2/>');
$('existing_element').before('<h2/>');

expected: return a jquery object for '<existing_element>'
actually: works as expected

$('not_existing_element').after('<h2/>');
$('not_existing_element').before('<h2/>');

expected: return an empty jquery object

actually: returns a jquery object for newly created '<h2/>'

[yurk]

jquery 1.7.1 also affected

[dmethvin]

Wow, interesting case. And by interesting I mean pain in the ass.

At some point a while back we decided to support things like $("<p>hello</p>").after("<p>world</p>") to get you two paragraphs in the collection. Prior to that I don't recall what it did, probably broke.

I agree though that it seems wrong to have .after() or .before() add stuff to an empty collection. I wonder whose code we'll break by fixing this.

​http://jsfiddle.net/T2h4h/

[yurk]

Yes, adding stuff to a primary collection by .after() and .before() is not so useful for chain-style coding.

An another bug posted into ​http://bugs.jquery.com/ticket/11230 could be related to this.

[saiwong]

This has been fixed in #12664.

Recommend ticket be closed.

[mikesherov]

Thanks for catching these, Sai. We'll close after discussing in the meeting today!

[mikesherov]

fixed in #12664.