Question

A variation of this question…

<div id="viewContainerTop">
  <div class="row1"></div>
  <div class="NotRow1"></div>
  <div class="row2"></div>
  <div class="row2"></div>
  <div class="row2"></div>
  <div class="row3 first"></div>
  <div class="donthideme"></div>
  <div class="row4"></div>
  <div class="row5"></div>
</div>

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly, try this:

$('#viewContainerTop > [class^=row]').not('.row2').hide();

The > is optional–it excludes matching of any deeper objects that start with row.

Here’s a live example that shows this, too (hit refresh to see the selector dim the desired elements).