Unique element ID, even if element doesn't have one

Question

I\'m writing a GreaseMonkey script where I\'m iterating through a bunch of elements. For each element, I need a string ID that I can use to reference that element later. The

Answer 1

The answer is no, there isn't an internal id you can access. Opera and IE (maybe Safari?) support .sourceIndex (which changes if DOM does) but Firefox has nothing of this sort.

You can simulate source-index by generating Xpath to a given node or finding the index of the node from document.getElementsByTagName('*') which will always return elements in source order.

All of this requires a completely static file of course. Changes to DOM will break the lookup.

What I don't understand is how you can loose references to nodes but not to (theoretical) internal id's? Either closures and assignments work or they don't. Or am I missing something?