Question

Why can’t I pass the num variable to this function like so:

    function getColumnData(num) {
    var colVals = $('#newtable td:nth-child(num)').map(function(){
       return $(this).text();
    }).get();
    alert(colVals);
    }

Is there an easy way around this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You need to concatenate the value of num with the selector string:

var colVals = $('#newtable td:nth-child(' + num + ')').map(function() {
    //Do stuff
});

Currently you just have a string literal “#newtable td:nth-child(num)”, instead of something that makes sense to the selector engine, such as “#newtable td:nth-child(2)”.