title: Getting an empty JQuery object
body: <p>In the following code I set up a change handler on a select box to show and hide some follow up questions based on the value of the selection.</p>
  
  <p>Further, for some values of the selection there is an extra message that is displayed.</p>
  
  <p>In order to check to see if I need to hide the extra message, I keep a variable called Previous.  Upon execution of the handler I check to see if Previous is null or if the size is 0.</p>
  
  <p>It would be nice to initialize Previous to an empty JQuery object so as not to have to do the extra check for null.</p>
  
  <p>Doing a $() returns an object with the size of 1.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to create an empty Jquery object?</p>
  
  <pre>
  //Init function.
  $(function(){
  //Hold the previously selected object for the account type selection.
  
  var Previous = null;  //Here is where I would like to initialize.
                        //something like Previous = $();
  
  
  $("SELECT[name='AccountType']").change(
      function () {
          //Hide Previous message if there was one.
          if(Previous == null || Previous.size() > 0){ 
              Previous.hide();
          }
  
          //Show the message if found and save it as previous.
          Previous = $("#"+this.value+"_Msg").show();
  
          //Get fisrt question
          var FirstQuestion = $(".FirstQuestion");
          if(this.value === ''){
              FirstQuestion.hide();
          }else{
              //Manually show FirstQuestion.
              FirstQuestion.show();
          }
      });
  }
  </pre>
  
  <p>In the worst case I could do something like this:</p>
  
  <pre>
      var Previous = { size : function () { return 0; } };
  </pre>
  
  <p>but that seems like overkill.</p>