Question

I see people creating HTML elements in jQuery in two different ways:

$('<element>')

and

$('<element />') 

I am curious which one is “more correct”. I see the obvious advantage to the first one as being just simply less to type. Does it make a difference at all which one is used?

Answer 1

There is no difference, as seen in the source code, line 30 & line 121:

/* Line 30*/
rsingleTag = /^<(\w+)\s*\/?>(?:<\/\1>)?$/,

/* Line 121 */
// If a single string is passed in and it's a single tag
// just do a createElement and skip the rest
ret = rsingleTag.exec( selector );

The following are equivalent:

• <a></a>
• <a />
• <a>