Question

I spit out this type of code frequently:

if ($(this).val() == 'X') {
    $('#something').show();
}
else {
    $('#something').hide();
}

I’m not crazy about having $(‘#something’) appear twice. Is there a more elegant way of expressing this?

[Update] I phrased the question badly – I’m looking for a general solution, not just show/hide (and therefore toggle). For the general case of taking different actions on a selected element(s) based on a conditional, is there a more elegant construct?

Answer 1

for the general question of not having ‘#something’ appear twice, I’d say it’s more readable to have it twice. otherwise, you wind up with the following:

$('#something')[$(this).val()=='X'?'show':'hide']();