What is the difference between jQuery has() and filter() methods?

Question

What is the difference between $.has('selecor') and $.filter('selector') methods, and which one of them is better?

Both of them seem to perform the same operation, maybe there are some performance benefits of using one instead of other?

Answer 1

They are quite different actually.

filter operates on the matched elements:

Reduce the set of matched elements to those that match the selector or pass the function's test.

has filters based on the descendants of the matched elements:

Reduce the set of matched elements to those that have a descendant that matches the selector or DOM element.

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Practical example:

<span class="outer">outer span</span>
<div  class="outer">
    outer div<br>
    <span>descendant span</span>
</div>

$('.outer').filter('span'); //returns the outer span
$('.outer').has('span');    //returns the outer div

Fiddle