title: Why does the select tag not work with a datalist tag?
body: <p>In HTML5, the <a href="https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_datalist.asp" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&lt;datalist&gt;</a> tag (<a href="https://dev.w3.org/html5/spec-preview/the-datalist-element.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Spec</a>) was introduced, to be used with <code>&lt;input&gt;</code> elements. It contains a set of <code>&lt;option&gt;</code> elements, just like the <code>&lt;select&gt;</code> tag. </p>
  
  <p>However, using the <code>&lt;input&gt;</code> tag allows the user the type their own text, where the dropdown options are kind of like a secondary feature. Whereas the <code>&lt;select&gt;</code> tag forces the user to choose one of the defined options.</p>
  
  <p>So I thought: why not create a <code>&lt;select&gt;</code> element, and give it a datalist instead of defining each <code>&lt;option&gt;</code> seperately. I have a project where I have multiple <code>select</code> elements on the same page which share the same set of options, so I thought this would be a nice optimization. However, it doesn't work. It can be tried <a href="https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml5_datalist" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>.</p>
  
  <p>Now this isn't a question about how one could go about doing this, as I think it's pretty clear that it's just not possible at the moment. I couldn't find any libraries to offer a similar feature either. I'm just curious <em>why</em> this itsn't possible. Is it just an oversight, that might be corrected later? Is there a significant problem with this idea that I just didn't think about?</p>