jQuery plugin to return the zero based column position of a table cell, regardless of colspans

jquery-columnPosition

/**
* An extension to JQuery that returns the actual column position of the table cell regardless of columns hvaing a colspan
*
* returns column index (zerobased)
*
* Based on code from SolutionYogi on stackoverflow
* http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1166452/finding-column-index-using-jquery-when-table-contains-column-spanning-cells
*/
(function($) {

    $.fn.columnPosition = function() {
		
        if(! this.is('td') && ! this.is('th'))
            return -1;

        var allCells = this.parent('tr').children();
        var normalIndex = allCells.index(this);
        var nonColSpanIndex = 0;

        allCells.each(
            function(i, item)
            {
                if(i == normalIndex)
                    return false;

                var colspan = $(item).attr('colspan');
                colspan = colspan ? parseInt(colspan, 10) : 1;
                nonColSpanIndex += colspan;
            }
        );

        return nonColSpanIndex;
    };

})(jQuery);