jQuery empty() vs remove()

$("body").empty() -- it' removes the HTML DOM elements inside the body tag -

when you declare $("body").remove() - it remove the entire HTML DOM along with body TAG .


  • empty() will empty the selection of its contents, but preserve the selection itself.
  • remove() will empty the selection of its contents and remove the selection itself.

Consider:

<div>
    <p><strong>foo</strong></p>
</div>

$('p').empty();  // --> "<div><p></p></div>"

// whereas,
$('p').remove(); // --> "<div></div>"

Both of them remove the DOM objects and should release the memory they take up, yes.

Here are links to documentation, which also contains examples:

  • .remove()
  • .empty()

The documentation explains it very well. It also contains examples:

  • .remove()
  • .empty()

before:

<div class="container">
  <div class="hello">Hello</div>
  <div class="goodbye">Goodbye</div>
</div>

.remove():

$('.hello').remove();

after:

<div class="container">
  <div class="goodbye">Goodbye</div>
</div>

before:

<div class="container">
  <div class="hello">Hello</div>
  <div class="goodbye">Goodbye</div>
</div>

.empty():

$('.hello').empty();

after:

<div class="container">
  <div class="hello"></div>
  <div class="goodbye">Goodbye</div>
</div>

As far as memory is concerned, once an element is removed from the DOM and there are no more references to it the garbage collector will reclaim the memory when it runs.

Tags:

Javascript

Jquery

Dom Manipulation

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