Forum: Ruby browser.html diffrent from the page source - watir-webdriver

Hi,

if I go to a page using watir-webdriver+ruby, and right click and view
source on firefox I see following code:

<a href="/mylink.html" class="my_links">Your home<span class="top
arrow"></span></a>

if I do browser.html in ruby it gives:
<a class="my_links" href="/mylink.html">Your home<span class="top
arrow"></span></a>

Why? and suppose I have input files which contains strings like:
<a href="/mylink.html" class="my_links">Your home<span class="top
arrow"></span></a>

I want to match with html source, but due to this problem it fails. Any
solution?

If this is consistent it might just be the order in which watir is 
processing the elements. You'd probably be best off making a check which 
allows for the attributes to be in different orders, or sorts them 
before checking for differences.

Joel Pearson wrote in post #1086689:
> If this is consistent it might just be the order in which watir is
> processing the elements. You'd probably be best off making a check which
> allows for the attributes to be in different orders, or sorts them
> before checking for differences.

Thats a great solution, but isnt it costly? I guess there may be some 
cheap solutions.