title: jquery - get elements in a specified columns of an html table
body: <p>Using jquery, I'd like to get all elements in a specified columns of an html table. Please note that it can be more than one column</p>
  
  <p>For example, if I have the following html table:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;table&gt;
     &lt;tr&gt; 
      &lt;td&gt;
        a
      &lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;
        b
      &lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;
        c
      &lt;/td&gt;
     &lt;/tr&gt;
     &lt;tr&gt; 
      &lt;td&gt;
        1
      &lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;
        2
      &lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;
        3
      &lt;/td&gt;
     &lt;/tr&gt;
  &lt;/table&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which looks as following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>1     2      3
  a     b      c
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I would like to get 1, 3, a , c</p>
  
  <p>How should I do it? What would be the most efficient way to do so? (I am traversing a huge table generated by some reporting utility)</p>