Get all elements without child node in jQuery
<p>I need to select elements without child node (including text since in <code>&lt;p&gt;</code> a text is a child node). </p>

<p>I used <code>empty</code>, but it also consider space as child node.</p>

<p><strong>Example:</strong>    </p>

<p>Markup:</p>

<pre><code> &lt;span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;
 &lt;span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>Script:</p>

<pre><code>$("span:empty").html("this was empty!");
</code></pre>

<p>Unfortunately, only the second element were selected and changed since the first element has space and it was considered child node.</p>

<p>How do I select elements without child node? I want to consider a space as nothing. Preferably, I want the code not to use loop to select them, there might be other ways.</p>
