I did some googling to understand the difference of $(this) and this, with the following result:

You need  $(this)  for jQuery functions, but when you want to access basic javascript methods of the element that don't use jQuery, you can just use  this.

 

My understanding is that $(this) is just the jQuery version of this.

But if I'm right, why the following code doesn't work if I replace this with $(this)??

1. var tab = ["John", "Steve", "Ben", "Damon"];
2. $list = $('#list');
3. 
   
4. $.each($(tab), function(){
5.   $list.append("<li>" + this + "</li>")
6. });

Thanks