What does jquery $ actually return?

Question

I have read the JQuery documentation, and while much attention is devoted to what you should pass the function, I don't see any information on what it actually returns.

In particular, does it always return an array, even if only one element is found? Does it return null when nothing is found? Where is this documented?

I understand that jquery methods can be applied to the return value, but what if I want to just use the return value directly?

Answer 1

From Rick Strahl's description:

The jQuery Object: The Wrapped Set: Selectors return a jQuery object known as the "wrapped set," which is an array-like structure that contains all the selected DOM elements. You can iterate over the wrapped set like an array or access individual elements via the indexer ($(sel)[0] for example). More importantly, you can also apply jQuery functions against all the selected elements.

About returning nothing:

Does it always return an array? Does it return null?

You always get the same thing back, whether or not it has any contents is the question. Typically you can check this by using .val() (e.g. $('.myElem').val())