jquery - what does $('<div/>') do?

Question

I saw this in jQuery tools in the tooltip script. What is <div/> ? I've never seen the backslash used that way. Probably going to get some down votes, but I must know.

Answer 1

It used to create a div element. Its short cut to <div></div>.

For example:

$('<div/>', {id: 'hello', 'class': 'new', html: 'New div'}).appendTo('#target');

will create div with id: hello, class: new with html New div and append to #target.

DEMO

More details

It means "create a jQuery-wrapped div element on the fly".

When the parameter has a single tag, such as $('<div />') or $('<a></a>'), jQuery creates the element using the native JavaScript createElement() function.

As result it will look like:

$(document.createElement("div"));

For detail see here