Why does @ContentChildren include self (this) when querying a matching selector?

Question

I have a component that can be nested and it tries to query its children.

@Component({
    selector: "container",
    template: `[{{this.children.length}}]<ng-content></ng-content>`
})
export class ContainerComponent {
    @ContentChildren(ContainerComponent) public children:QueryList<ContainerComponent>;
}

However, the QueryList does not just include all child-components, but also the querying component itself (== this).

<container>
    <container></container>
    <container></container>
</container>

The output is [3][1][1] rather than [2][0][0].

https://plnkr.co/edit/mGuJEE60QUCXYb3jIYUx?p=preview

Can this be prevented? For DI there is @SkipSelf, but it doesn't seem to apply with @ContentChildren.

Answer 1

There is an open bug to get this changed and it was confirmed. This will change in the future.

https://github.com/angular/angular/issues/10098#issuecomment-235157642