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barneycarroll/jquery.notextSelector.js

Last active March 24, 2026 14:10
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`:notext` is an alternative to the `:empty` selector for jQuery. Elements consisting exclusively of an amount of whitespace or HTML comments will be returned.
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jquery.notextSelector.js
/*
jQuery's ':empty' selector only returns true if the element contains no text node, or whose text node consists exclusively of zero or more spaces and tabs. This ':notext' selector will return true for elements whose text nodes can also contain line breaks (any whitespace character) and HTML comments.
*/
$.expr[':'].notext = function detectNoText(x){
return x.innerHTML && x.innerHTML.replace(/(<!--.*(?!-->))|\s+/g, '').length === 0
}
@pegasuspect
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pegasuspect commented Dec 19, 2015

A must-have in jQuery! Thanks for the code.

@eliot-cole
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eliot-cole commented Mar 24, 2026

Apologies for bothering anyone that comes here, but if you know how one might include this in a jquery based userscript I would be most thankful! 😲

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