Those methods are destructive though.
A co-worker just came up with this very nice solution:
alert($('#test').clone().children().remove().end().text());
=================================================================================
On Oct 3, 10:09 am, "Mauricio \(Maujor\) Samy Silva"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 1-) alert($('*', $('p')).remove().text())
> 2-) alert($('*', $('p')).empty().text())
>
> $('*', $('p')) // contextual selector: finds all HTML elements inside the
> paragraphs.
> Chain with empty() ou remove() according your needs
>
> Maurício
>
> > Is there a more elegant, concise, pure jQuery approach to doing the
> > following?...
>
> > HTML: <p id="test">paragraph_text<span>span_text</span></p>
>
> > JAVASCRIPT:
> > var p_txt = $('#test').text().substring(0, ($('#test').text().length -
> > $('#test span').text().length));
> > alert(p_txt);
>
> > OUTPUT: paragraph_text
