using val(val) to set selected option of select list selects wrong option

[anentropic]

I have a select list like: <select name="sizes" id="mysel"> <option value="3">3</option> <option value="4">3.5</option> <option value="5">4</option> <option value="6">4.5</option> <option value="7">5</option> </select>

I want to set the selected option by value (which correspond to ids in the db): $('#mysel').val(4)

This selects the option with the text label 4, whose value is actually 5.

This is surely incorrect behaviour.

[anentropic]

..especially since $('#mysel').val() returns the value, *not* the label... so the val method of select lists works differently depending on whether you're getting or setting!

[anentropic]

Well, I just read a mailing list post explaining what jQuery is doing here: ​http://osdir.com/ml/jQuery/2009-05/msg00584.html

Apparently it's even worse... the behaviour is pretty much unpredictable, it could return value OR label depending on the structure of your list. It seems the method has been optimised for speed ahead of utility and common sense...

[john]

This was resolved in 1.4. More tests here to confirm: ​http://github.com/jquery/jquery/commit/879799fe955f01b85b59fd8a0096d415fc48df03