Using two identical attribute selectors [class][class]

Question

Yesterday I stumbled across a rule in one of our company's css files that looks like this:

.classname1[class][class] { 
   margin:0 !important; 
}

My interpretation of this rule is that maybe someone wanted to make sure that this rule will apply, even if another class with the ".important" property was added. If this was the case I believe it would be enough with one [class] attibute: Like this:

.classname1[class] {
   margin:0 !important;
}
.classname2 {
   margin:5px !important;
}
<div class="classname1 classname2">
   ...
</div>

My question is, why the second attribute property [class] in the rule?

Answer 1

[class][class] matches any element that has a class attribute (or, to be more precise, at least one class attribute — see below for why). The only functional difference between [class][class] and [class] is specificity, as each attribute selector contributes its own specificity amount :

Note: Repeated occurrences of the same simple selector are allowed and do increase specificity.

For reference, here are the specificities of all three example selectors:

/* 1 class, 2 attributes -> specificity = (0,3,0) */
.classname1[class][class]

/* 1 class, 1 attribute  -> specificity = (0,2,0) */
.classname1[class]

/* 1 class               -> specificity = (0,1,0) */
.classname2

An !important declaration under a less specific selector will still override a non-important declaration under this selector. An !important declaration under this selector will override any !important declarations under less specific selectors (or equally specific selectors appearing earlier in the source order).

If the only selector that needed to be overridden was .classname2 , then adding two attribute selectors on top of a class selector would indeed be overkill. But for all we know, the author might have intended to override a selector like your intermediate example. Or it might have indeed been a mistake. Only they would know for sure, but these are my educated guesses.

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The reason [class][class] matches is because it does not require the element to have two class attributes — within a compound selector, all simple selectors are treated independently of each other, and this includes attribute selectors regardless of their names and/or values. Selectors does not specify or presume whether an element can have multiple class attributes — only that an attribute presence selector matches based on the presence of at least one.

Having said that, the spec does contain an informative note with respect to class selectors (ie not attribute selectors for the class attribute) suggesting that an element may theoretically have multiple class attributes, although this isn't possible in contemporary HTML. It also states, normatively , that an element can have multiple ID attributes and all of them must be used when matching ID selectors. No such explicit text exists for value-matching with respect to attribute selectors, as multiple IDs are only possible in HTML with different attributes, but it's probably logical to deduce that the same would apply.