Getting text within element excluding decendants

Question

I see that jQuery has the .text() function for getting all text within an element and its descendant elements.

Is there a way to only get the text that

Answer 1

Working example at jsFiddle

var divClone = $('div').clone();    //  WARNING:
divClone.children().remove();       //  This code is much slower than the 
alert(divClone.text());             //  code in the selected answer.

Update

The performance test in @patrick dw's answer clearly shows that his approach is the better alternative. I did not delete this answer, because I think it is helpful to future readers of the question who might not know which way is better.