Question

Many of the CSS attributes in the project I’m currently maintaining start with a caret ^ like so:

<tr style="^padding-bottom: 10px;">

Does the caret have any meaning? Perhaps a fix for some obscure browser? Or is it just a typo from a previous developer that has been copy-pasted x times (as it is always there together with the ‘padding-bottom’)?

Answer 1

The styles with the caret in front of them don’t get applied. So it might be a way to comment out CSS styles in this case, without having to use entire HTML comments. It isn’t a standard way to do it though.

(Example)

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The caret character in CSS does have meaning, the “Begins With” Attribute selector.

It lets you target an element in your CSS based on whether the attribute’s value begins with a given string.

E[foo]  an E element with a "foo" attribute
E[foo="bar"]    an E element whose "foo" attribute value is exactly equal to "bar"
E[foo~="bar"]   an E element whose "foo" attribute value is a list of whitespace-separated values, one of which is exactly equal to "bar"
E[foo^="bar"]   an E element whose "foo" attribute value begins exactly with the string "bar"
E[foo$="bar"]   an E element whose "foo" attribute value ends exactly with the string "bar"
E[foo*="bar"]   an E element whose "foo" attribute value contains the substring "bar"

However, in your case, the caret isn’t functioning as a selector.