选择不在另一个div jQuery内的div

Question

let's say I have an HTML structure like this:

<div class="first">
    <div class="sub-1">
        <div class="first again"></div>
    </div>
</div>

How do I select only the div that has the class "first" but which is NOT inside the div that has the class "sub-1". In order words, how do I get only the outer div but extract any div inside that outter div that have the same class than the outter div (I want to get just the div with class="first", not the one with class="first again").

Thank you

Answer 1

I dont know if you mean a very generic way to handle this but in this particular case you can only write.

$(".first:first")

A more generic way would be

$('.first').not('.sub-1 .first').prepend("I was first");

http://jsfiddle.net/JYLVc/

Answer 2

See jQuery documentation for .not() . This should work:

$('.first').not('.sub-1 .first');