Fastest way to traverse a DOM element tree in Javascript / JQuery
<p>I am trying to traverse a DOM select element that looks like this:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;select&gt;
    &lt;option value='1'&gt;Text 1&lt;/option&gt;
    &lt;option value='2'&gt;Text 2&lt;/option&gt;
    &lt;option value='3'&gt;Text 3&lt;/option&gt;
    &lt;option value='4'&gt;Text 4&lt;/option&gt;
    . . .
    &lt;option value='n'&gt;Text n&lt;/option&gt;
&lt;/select&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>Such that <code>n</code> is greater than 10000 elements.  What is the most efficient way to get the contents of this DOM? </p>
