attr gives an unhandled error when run on a document selection

[lonesomeday]

Before jQuery 1.6, it was possible (if silly) to get the properties of the document object using attr(). This functionality has obviously been broken in 1.6. However, it does not fail in a natural way (returning undefined?). It calls getAttribute on the node, which causes a JS error.

​jsFiddle example

​StackOverflow question

[lonesomeday]

​Github pull request -- make attr return undefined (as for comment and text nodes).

[timmywil]

As the docs now state (​http://api.jquery.com/attr), attr should not be used on the document or window. It throws an error because these do not and cannot have attributes. Failing silently may not be as helpful.