jQuery :not() issue

Question

jQuery 1.4:

$('#menu li:last:not(.ignore)').addClass('last');

HTML:

<div id="menu">
    <ul>
        <li>item 1</li>
        <li>item 2</li>
        <li class="ignore">item3</li>
    </ul>
</div>

.. last class is not applied to item 2. What am I doing wrong here?

Thanks

Answer 1

Change the order of :last and :not():

$('#menu li:not(.ignore):last')

Answer 2

The way your expression works is this:

• Find the element with ID "menu";
• Find all descendant list items of that element;
• Limit the results to the very last element in that set;
• Filter out elements (which is only one element by this point, the last one) that don't have a class of "ignore".

The last element has a class of ignore so it is filtered out. That's why it doesn't work. Reverse the order:

$("#menu li:not(.ignore):last").addClass("last");

Answer 3

It seems more logical to me at least to say 'get me the list item before the first occurence of .ignore':

// tested
$("#menu li.ignore:first").prev("li").addClass('last');