Appending a DOM element twice (jQuery)

Question

Can someone explain why the following snippet does not add to both #a and #b?

HTML:

Answer 1

You need to create a new instance every single time you want to append to the DOM.

Otherwise it refers to the same instance which was already appended.

Remove the $ symbol preceding the new div to be added as that evaluates to a jQuery object and has the limitations as above stated. or clone the element.

$(function(){
    var foo = "HI";
    $("#a").append(foo);
    $("#b").append(foo);
});

Check Fiddle