Question

$('pre:contains("\n")') will select all <pre> which contain at least one newline.
How to select all <pre> which contains no newline or only one newline at the end?
What’s the quick way?

match

<pre>A</pre>

---

<pre>B
</pre>

not match

<pre>C

</pre>

---

<pre>

D</pre>

---

<pre>

E
</pre>

Answer 1

Perhaps simple approach would suffice, trimmed the text then detect newline:

var myList = $('pre').filter(function(index) {
    var val = $(this).text().trim();
    return val.indexOf('\n') == -1;
});

$.each(myList, function() {
    alert($(this).text());
});​

Sample data:

<pre>hello</pre>

<pre>great
</pre>

<pre>you
say
</pre>

<pre>

yes</pre>

<pre>

heila
</pre>

<pre>not
included</pre>

<pre>included</pre>
​

Outputs:

 hello
 great
 yes
 heila
 included

Live test: http://jsfiddle.net/Anb6q/1/