Question

Inspired from the post JQuery changing content of table cell , I am trying to modify the content of table cells containing a particular string which includes non breaking white spaces   or equivalently  , but I can’t seem to make it work in my case.

Html code:

    <table id='table1'>
      <tr>
         <td>&nbsp;a</td>
         <td>b</td>
      </tr>
    </table>​

JQuery:

  $("#table1 td:contains(' a')").html("hallo");

It has no effect.

Another question: Is there a selector stricter than contains, selecting only the cells with exactly a given string?

Answer 1

If you use .filter(), you can select elements based on any custom criteria you want.

$('#table1 td').filter(function()
{
    return $(this).html().indexOf(' a') !== -1;

}).html('hallo');

or to answer your other question:

$('#table1 td').filter(function()
{
    return $(this).html() === ' a';

}).html('hallo');

This is a lot more robust than writing convoluted selector strings.