Patterns for avoiding jQuery silent fails

Question

Is there any good practice to avoid your jQuery code silently fail?

For example:

$(\'.this #is:my(complexSelector)\').doSomething();

Answer 1

I would recommend using jQuery lint.

for example

$(function(){
  var foo = $('.this #is:my(complexSelector)');
});

will complain both that you have an invalid selector (as given example selector is in fact invalid, though I assume you know that :)), and that no elements where in fact found.

See http://js.azatoth.net/test/lint.html for an example.