jQuery

A quick note on the detach() method..

By Niall Kader1 min read

If the selector you use with detach() doesn't match any element in the dom, then JQuery will still return an object.

(function($){

	$(document).ready(function(){
		
		var obj = $("#someDivThatDoesntExist").detach();
		
		alert(obj); 
		// shows that obj is an Object
		
		alert(obj.length);
		// shows that the length is 0 
		// (I could swear this returned 1 in an earlier version of jQuery)
		
		alert(obj[0]);
		// undefined
	});

})(jQuery);