What does jquery $ actually return?
<p>I have read the JQuery documentation, and while much attention is devoted to what you should <em>pass</em> the function, I don't see any information on what it actually <em>returns</em>.</p>

<p>In particular, does it always return an array, even if only one element is found?  Does it return null when nothing is found?  Where is this documented?</p>

<p>I understand that jquery methods can be applied to the return value, but what if I want to just use the return value directly?</p>
