Javascript confusion

Question

 var allRapidSpells = $$('input[value^=RSW]');

Can anyone tell me what that does?

Answer 1

Return all inputs that hava value starting with RSW

Answer 2

It looks like it uses some CSS selectors using some javascript library, the CSS selectors return all input tags where the value begins RSW.

Answer 3

calls a method on the windows object called $$ and passes a string argument to it, which appears to be an xpath expression.

which returns input tags that contain an attribute called value starting with RSW.

Answer 4

It calls the function named '$$' with the parameter 'input[value...' and assigns the returnvalue of that function to the var allRapidSpells.

Javascript doesn't consider the '$' to be a reserved character, which jQuery makes excellent use of.

Answer 5

I would venture to guess that you're using MooTools, a JavaScript framework. The $$() function is used to select an element (or multiple elements) in the DOM.

More specifically, the $$('input[value^=RSW]'); syntax is selecting all input elements whose value attribute starts with RSW.

Other attribute selectors include:

• = : is equal to
• *= : contains
• ^= : starts-with
• $= : ends-with
• != : is not equal to
• ~= : contained in a space separated list
• |= : contained in a '-' separated list

Edit: It looks as though Prototype, another JavaScript framework, uses the same syntax.