Is storing jQuery elements in variables more efficient?

Question

Which is more efficient please?

var myElement = $(\"#the-name-of-my-element\")

myElement.doSomethingOnce;
myElement.doSomethingTwice;
...
myElement.doSometh         


        

Answer 1

jQuery does not cache selectors - as detailed in this question:

Does jQuery do any kind of caching of "selectors"?

As a result, each time you perform $("#the-name-of-my-element") jQuery is performing some work to match the selector.

For anything other than trivial code, I'd always cache selectors.

See also ...

At what level should I cache results of jQuery DOM queries?