We would save more bytes that way?

Or just for the consistency with https://github.com/jquery/jquery/pull/2000/files#diff-85f162ae43172ebe26b51a4d1c5d4eddR94

Seemed strange to set the length before the element. I pulled several of the changes from @gibson042 's older PR because they just seemed so right. 😄

:)

Always wondered why this property was named "jquery", not "version"

It's killing two birds with one stone: the presence of the property identifies an object as a jQuery collection as opposed to Array/NodeList/Prototype/Zepto/etc., and the value specifies which version.

It's killing two birds with one stone

Yeah! Or "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"

This property indeed serve for two complitly different things, but i don't think that's good, i think these should be exposed explicitly then otherwise. Besides, i'm not sure that was an original intent.

the presence of the property identifies an object as a jQuery

This could always be done by other means, like:

function test() {}
new test().constructor.name // test

// i.e. we could do

function jQuery() {}
jQuery.prototype.constructor = jQuery;
$().constructor.name // "jQuery"

Or other countless ways to do it. Not saying we should do something about it, it might be too late, like with $.each vs $.map callback arguments case :-(

Yea, it's too late.

Until I looked at the old PR, I had just planned to see if the .selector property was present but the change by @gibson042 seemed like a slightly better assertion.

I guess .version was avoided since it's a pretty common name. You wouldn't think someobject.fn.version would be that ambiguous but it's also available via someobject.prototype.version so maybe that caused concern.

Yea, it's too late.

Isn't that frustrating? We can't improve something because people are dependent upon it.

I guess .version was avoided since it's a pretty common name.

If i would do it today, i would called it "version" and provided other ways to identify jquery object

This property indeed serve for two complitly different things, but i don't think that's good, i think these should be exposed explicitly then otherwise.

The purposes aren't completely different; they're analogous to nodeType checks in that both properties are considered to have a universal meaning regardless of where they appear. jquery specifies the version of jQuery used to construct a collection, which—since it must be undefined for objects that are not jQuery collections—can be cast as a boolean for type checking, just like casting nodeType to boolean checks for DOM nodes. That said, though, there might well have been a better choice for the name, but it's definitely too late to change.