How to get the eq() of $(this)?

Here's my code:

$('div.menu > ul > li > a').click(function(e) {

    alert($(this).eq());
    e.preventDefau开发者_StackOverflow社区lt();

});

<div class="menu">

    <ul>
        <li><a href="">Animals</a></li>
        <li><a href="">Cars</a></li>
        <li><a href="">Sports</a></li>
    </ul>

</div><!-- menu -->

My attempt alerts an object object error. If should instead return the numeric place of the link being clicked. For example if you click animals it should alert 1 (not sure if the eq count starts at 0 like arrays in which case it should alert that) and if you click sports it should alert 3 and so on...

Eq does start at 0, and to get it you need to have a reference list, try:

var links = $('div.menu > ul > li > a');
links.click(function(e) {
         var index = links.index($(this));
         alert(index);
         e.preventDefault();
});

Online example: http://jsfiddle.net/tYeV4/

The function you're after is $(this).index(), and it's zero-based.

You can make the functionality simpler by using the zero argument version of .index(), and putting the handler on the <li> tags instead of the <a> tags - see http://jsfiddle.net/udKJf/

$('div.menu > ul > li').click(function(e) {
    alert($(this).index());
    e.preventDefault();
});

Putting the handler on the <li> tags allows a sibling-based index to be automatically calculated by jQuery.

Alternatively, leave the selector referring to the <a> tags and use $(this).parent().index().