jQuery empty() vs remove()

• empty() will empty the selection of its contents, but preserve the selection itself.
• remove() will empty the selection of its contents and remove the selection itself.

Consider:

<div>
    <p><strong>foo</strong></p>
</div>

$('p').empty();  // --> "<div><p></p></div>"

// whereas,
$('p').remove(); // --> "<div></div>"

Both of them remove the DOM objects and should release the memory they take up, yes.

Here are links to documentation, which also contains examples:

• .remove()
• .empty()