Trouble with the jQuery find method

[Greg Charles]

I'm doing something wrong with searching inside a context. I'd expect something like $("input[name=somename]") to return the same set as $("input").find("[name=somename]") in all cases. However, on Bear's Operations Lab Page, I typed in:

$("input[name=checkboxes]")

Results:

4 matching elements:
INPUT#checkbox1
INPUT#checkbox2
INPUT#checkbox3
INPUT#checkbox4

Then I tried:
$("input").find("[name=checkboxes]")

Results:

0 matching elements:


I also tried $("[name=checkboxes]",$("input")), and also got 0 results. Where am I going wrong?


For reference:

$("input")

Results:

8 matching elements:
INPUT#aTextField
INPUT#radioA
INPUT#radioB
INPUT#radioC
INPUT#checkbox1
INPUT#checkbox2
INPUT#checkbox3
INPUT#checkbox4

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Greg,
find() is supposed to match a descendant (child, grandchild, etc) of the matched node.

The following finds a bunch of li.
$("ul").find("li")

Since name="checkboxes" is an attribute on the attribute you have already matched and not a child, find() can't find it. But the original can because you are asking for attributes on the current element.

[Greg Charles]

Oh, that's right. I knew I must be doing something fundamentally wrong. It's filter I want, right? Sigh, this will all sink in eventually. Thanks!

[Bear Bibeault]

Yup, I think it was filter() that you were thinking of.