What is the difference direct descendent (>) vs. descendant in jQuery selectors?

Question

What\'s the difference between these two jQuery statements? They seem to do the same thing by getting all the children div tags.

$(\"#mainblock div\")
         


        

Answer 1

$("#mainblock div")

Matches any div element that is a descendant of #mainblock.

$("#mainblock > div")

Matches any div element that is a child of #mainblock .

check http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/selector.html