[jQuery] Syntactic sugar for checking whether an element exists

[jQuery] Syntactic sugar for checking whether an element exists

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I've just been wondering if jQuery has some syntactic sugar for
checking if an element exists. I know the following works:
<tt>--------------------------------------------------------
if ($('#my-element').length) {
     // #my-element exists
}
--------------------------------------------------------</tt>
but is there also something similar to the following?:
<tt>--------------------------------------------------------
if ($('#my-element').exists()) {
     // #my-element exists
}
--------------------------------------------------------</tt>
I'm asking because I know this was one of the things I was initially
unsure about when learning jQuery and I just had a one of my many
jQuery converted friends ask me about it again. So is anybody else
thinking some syntactic sugar could be helpful here? Or what do you
think about:
<tt>--------------------------------------------------------
$('#my-element').is('*') ?
--------------------------------------------------------
(Besides that it's probably inefficient *g*)
</tt>-- Felix
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