jQuery find self

Question

This may sound odd, but I'm working on a plugin that needs to find elements within a div, or the div itself.

The script finds an element based on a user selection, but the contents, including the markup is variable. So the script will look for the element as follows:

$('.block').find(selector); // selector set by user

but there isn't an easy way to have the selector select the '.block'. Selecting the parent before using find isn't a solution, as there are multiple '.block' elements.

I know extending the expr[":"] selector won't work as it is only looking for children. But, I did figure out a way to "duck punch" this method, by making a ':self' selector:

(function($){
    var orig = $.fn.find;

    $.fn.find = function(sel){
        return (sel === ':self') ? this : orig.call(this,sel);
    }

})(jQuery)

But this seems a bit over the top. And it will slow jQuery processing a tiny bit with every find function. Is there another way to do this?

---

Thanks for the answers! But I ended up doing this:

var b = $('.block'),
 el = (b.is(selector)) ? b : b.find(selector);

Answer 1

approach with find('*') would be much more CPU intensive and I would recommend:

$('.block').find(selector).add($('.block').filter(selector));