The need was pretty simple : "Find the elements that contain a particular word and display them and hide others" Along with my friend Kambfhase we came with a simple hack to achieve this, well this in itself is very simple to be a jQuery plugin but can be a part of huger system.

Code :

( function ( $ ) { $.fn.filterByPattern = function ( string ) { var regex = new RegExp ( string, "ig" ) ; return this.hide ( ) .filter ( function ( ) { return regex.test ( $ ( this ) .text ( ) ) ; } ) .show ( ) ; } ; } ( jQuery ) ) ;

Usage: $("div").filterByPattern("python")

Extra : Used the same at codingconfessional.com to filter out the needed, for example : $("div.confession").filterByPattern("python") will show all the python confessions ;)

Update 0: Why was contains() not used? Issue 278