For the performance interested jQuery users please check out this thread
For the impatient, read Stephens reply
He benchmarked what I asked and concluded that $("p", $("#foo"))
is much faster in jQuery 1.3.2. I've been coding this style in jQuery for all recent projects so I'm happy with this outcome.
UPDATE
John Resig himself joined in on the discussion and had this to say:
"You should always use $("#foo").find("p") in favor of $("p", $("#foo")) - the second one ends up executing $(...) 3 times total - only to arrive at the same result as doing $("#foo").find("p")."
UPDATE 2
Not only did John join in on the discussion but it also made him work on jQuery 1.3.3 (not yet released at the time of writing) so that it doesn't matter which format you use you get the same performance. See the benchmark here
Comments
Why not simply: $("#foo").find("p");
The syntax is more clear and readable, and jQuery isn't called twice.
Performance wise, they are practically equivalent.
See my update in the blog post.