Question

I currently have a selector that looks like this:

$("span[row!='2'][row!='5'][row!='1']");

Is there an easier way to write this? I tried this but it didn’t work:

$("span[row!='1,2,5']");

Answer 1

No there is no way to combine not equal selectors in this manner. The result would be interpretted as the string '1,2,3' and not individual values. You’ll have to enumerate the cases.

You could though write a function to make this easier to write. For example

var makeNotEquals = function(name) {
  var clause = '';
  for (var i = 1; i < arguments.length; i++) {
    clause = clause + '[' + name + '!=\'' + arguments[i] + '\']';
  }
  return clause;
}

Usage

var selector = 'span' + makeNotEquals('row', 2, 1, 5);
$(selector)