Different ways of writing on a given element using jquery

Question

I am trying to explore any possible coding option that I can use to simplify my code or have a better flexibility on writing the code. If I have this element nest..

<table>
   <tr><td></td><td></td></tr>
   <tr><td></td><td></td></tr>
   <tr><td></td><td></td></tr>
   <tr><td></td><td></td></tr>
</table>

if I want to write text on first columns, I can do

$("table tr").each(function({
  // how to write text here on all first column using $(this)?
  // other ways to write on first column?
});

// other ways to write all first column not using ".each"

Answer 1

You can use the first selector:

$('table tr td:first').each(function(){
    $(this).text('1st column');
});

Or without using each:

$('table tr td:first').text('1st column');

---

I hope I got your comment right. If you do not want to use first for some reason, you could check whether prev() is empty inside your call to each().

if ($(this).prev().length == 0){
    // $(this) references the first column
}

Answer 2

$("table tr").each(function({
    $(this).find('td:first').text('Some text');
});