how to limit the jquery search scope

Question

It looks like JQuery does the search in the current document when using a selector.

How to search for an element only inside a div

Answer 1

Old question, but everyone seems to have missed the scoped jQuery selector (using the scope you desired, i.e. your div selector, as the second parameter)

e.g. use

var $matches = $('.adiv', '#mydiv');

This is a shorter equivalent of:

var $matches = $('#mydiv').find('.adiv');