:last-child not working as expected?

:last-child will not work if the element is not the VERY LAST element

I think it’s crucial to add/emphasize that :last-child will not work if the element is not the VERY LAST element in a container. For whatever reason it took me hours to realize that, and even though Harry’s answer is very thorough I couldn’t extract that information from “The last-child selector is used to select the last child element of a parent.”

Suppose this is my selector: a:last-child {}

This works:

<div>
    <a></a>
    <a>This will be selected</a>
</div>

This doesn’t:

<div>
    <a></a>
    <a>This will no longer be selected</a>
    <div>This is now the last child :'( </div>
</div>

It doesn’t because the a element is not the last element inside its parent.

It may be obvious, but it was not for me…

Sidebar: This may seem like a ridiculous gotcha, but the devil’s always in the details. :last-of-type may fit your needs in most cases (and feels intuitive) but :last-child definitely serves a purpose. It offers greater specificity (targeting only those elements which are, in-fact, the very last child in a parent). It depends on your use-case.