What is the reverse operation of jQuery text()

Question

I have a user input like

var input = "x + y > z"

I create an element like this:

var span = jQuery("<span/>").text(input)

How can I get the original text back, not escaped?

Answer 1

Using .text() will give you the text content. That will not be an escaped version. Whereas if you use .html() then the text would be escaped and returned.

var span = jQuery("<span/>").text(input)
var returnedText = span.text();