jquery - Find the next element that is not immediate?

Question

I want to find the first span element after class counter, in code something like this:

<div class="counter"></div>
<p></p>
<span></span>

It seems like the next() function only finds the immediate next element, so something like this:

$(".counter").next("span")

Won't work. The way I have been using is a bit lengthy and I was wondering if there was a shorter way, it is this:

$(".counter").nextAll("span").eq(0)

I think the closest() method in jQuery 3 will do the trick, but I am using 1.2.6 -- is there a better way to do this (am I just using next() wrong?)

Answer 1

Similar to the marked answer but looks a little cleaner using the :first selector:

$('.counter').nextAll('span:first')