Is jQuery .attr() method XSS safe?

Question

Here is my jquery code snippet

       var testURL = $(location).attr('search').split('&');
       ....
       $(location).attr('search',testURL.join('&'));

Is attr() method XSS safe. Looks like not as i did not find anything related to escape at docs If not how can i escape it ?

UPDATE :-

Basically my question is in context of getting and setting both.First i am getting $(location).attr('search').split('&'); and doing split on it. Can there be any here here if query string contains malicious data?

Also while setting i am doing $(location).attr('search',testURL.join('&') , what if testURL contains malicious data ?

Answer 1

$(location).attr('search', whatever);

is equivalent to

location.search = whatever;

So it's no more or less safe than the plain Javascript version.