Why is $(div#id) slower than $(#id)?

Question

Unless there is something wrong with my test, when I run this jsfiddle on Chrome I'm getting around 11ms for an $("#id") selector and 56ms for a $(div#id) selector.

$(document).ready(function(){
    startTime = new Date().getTime();
    for (i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
    {
        s = $("#idC12");
    }           
    $("#idResults").html("c12 by id only time: "+elapsedMilliseconds(startTime));

    startTime = new Date().getTime();
    for (i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
    {
        s = $("div#idC12");
    }           
    $("#classResults").html("c12 by tagname#id: "+elapsedMilliseconds(startTime));
});

function elapsedMilliseconds(startTime)
{
    var n = new Date();
    var s = n.getTime();
    var diff = s - startTime;
    return diff;
}

http://jsfiddle.net/MhWUc/

Answer 1

That's because $("#id") internally uses the native document.getElementById function, which uses a map linking from the id to the (unique) element having this id.

Here's the relevant code in jQuery source :

        // Easily-parseable/retrievable ID or TAG or CLASS selectors
        rquickExpr = /^(?:#([\w-]+)|(\w+)|\.([\w-]+))$/
        ...
        // Speed-up: Sizzle("#ID")
        if ( (m = match[1]) ) {
            if ( nodeType === 9 ) {
                elem = context.getElementById( m );
                // Check parentNode to catch when Blackberry 4.6 returns
                // nodes that are no longer in the document #6963
                if ( elem && elem.parentNode ) {
                    // Handle the case where IE, Opera, and Webkit return items
                    // by name instead of ID
                    if ( elem.id === m ) {
                        results.push( elem );
                        return results;
                    }
                } else {
                    return results;
                }
            } else {
                // Context is not a document
                if ( context.ownerDocument && (elem = context.ownerDocument.getElementById( m )) &&
                    contains( context, elem ) && elem.id === m ) {
                    results.push( elem );
                    return results;
                }
            }

You'll notice that :

• it's used when the regex detects the #someId form
• any provided context only adds a test, and doesn't make it faster

Note that this rule is still true outside of jQuery, when defining CSS rules or using document.querySelector : when you know the id, there is nothing faster than using document.getElementById (apart a cached element...).