Error in escaping selector

[soothsayer]

If you name a textbox with name="txtRating["

and then use a selector like $("input[name=txtRating
[]") it gives an error in Firefox only. Works fine on Chrome.

Firebug console reads: [Exception... "'Syntax error, unrecognized expression: ]' when calling method: [nsIDOMEventListener::handleEvent]" nsresult: "0x8057001e (NS_ERROR_XPC_JS_THREW_STRING)" location: "<unknown>" data: no]

I'm attaching along a sample code to reproduce the bug.

[soothsayer]

Sample Code

[soothsayer]

Forgot to mention,

If I use $('input[name="txtRating["]') as my selector, it works fine on Firefox.

[Rwhitbeck]

Isn't this $('input[name="txtRating["]') the proper syntax anyways?

Is this even a bug?

[soothsayer]

Rwhitbeck: The syntax you are using is an alternative I suppose.

As quoted on ​http://docs.jquery.com/Selectors

---

Note: if you wish to use any of the meta-characters described above as a literal part of a name, you must escape the character with two backslashes (\). For example:

#foo
:bar #foo
[bar
] #foo
.bar

---

More important, the point being that it should either work in all browsers or none. That's the essence of jquery as a robust & platform independent framework.

Let me know what you think

[Rwhitbeck]

Take a look at this page which more accurately describes what you are trying to do:

​http://docs.jquery.com/Selectors/attributeEquals#attributevalue

Specifically the note for arguments value: "An attribute value. Quotes are optional in most cases, but should be used to avoid conflicts when the value contains characters like "]"."

I feel that the example you are giving isn't supported but is working anyways in some browsers.

[soothsayer]

Fair enough.

I think this must be brought to more highlight. Added it at the bottom of the ​http://docs.jquery.com/API/1.3/Selectors page now. Not many people know about this since I discussed this before on IRC, etc and no one could figure out.

Anyway, I really hope this behavior is standardized across browsers. Such a bug in codes would really take long to locate.

Cheers!

[dmethvin]

Since the documentation has been clarified that you should quote special characters, it doesn't seem like there is a lot we can do. Your edit on the Selectors page helps. Different browsers may not handle error cases the same way, but if the values are quoted everything works consistently.