jQuery selector value escaping

Question

I have a dropdown list that contains a series of options:

<select id=SomeDropdown>
  <option value="a'b]&lt;p>">a'b]&lt;p></option>
  <option value="easy">easy</option>
<select>

Notice that the option value/text contains some nasty stuff:

• single quotes
• closing square bracket
• escaped html

I need to remove the a'b]<p> option but I'm having no luck writing the selector. Neither:

$("#SomeDropdown >option[value='a''b]<p>']");

or

$("#SomeDropdown >option[value='a'b]<p>']");

are returning the option.

What is the correct way to escape values when using the "value=" selector?

Answer 1

I use this function to escape jquery selectors. It escapes basically everything questionable but may be too aggressive.

function escapeStr(str) 
{
    if (str)
        return str.replace(/([ #;?%&,.+*~':"!^$[]()=>|/@])/g,'\$1');      

    return str;
}