Why is the jquery empty function so complicated?

Question

I looked at the jQuery source code for the .empty() function:

empty: function() {
        for ( var i = 0, elem; (elem = this[i]) != null; i++ ) {
            // Remove element nodes and prevent memory leaks
            if ( elem.nodeType === 1 ) {
                jQuery.cleanData( elem.getElementsByTagName("*") );
            }

            // Remove any remaining nodes
            while ( elem.firstChild ) {
                elem.removeChild( elem.firstChild );
            }
        }​

Couldn't it be a lot simpler with just changing the innerHTML to an empty string:

empty: function() {
        for ( var i = 0, elem; (elem = this[i]) != null; i++ ) {
                elem.innerHTML = "";
        }​

The empty docs:

Description: Remove all child nodes of the set of matched elements from the DOM.

Answer 1

Just think about .data() expandos and event handlers... By just removing the DOM, you would create memory leaks every time.