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Can someone explain the thinking behind this? Wouldn’t it be much simpler to have #id always override a .class?

The way it is set up currently that’s basically always the case (since 256 .classes are rarely used), but there is this weird edge case when as many .classes are used.

I don’t think it’s possible to meaningfully work with a rule like that. It just seems so non-sensical.

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As far as I can tell from the specification posts here, it's entirely to make implementation more feasible. Rather than some complicated calculation of precedence, you can just assign each rule a single score. As long as the weird exception essentially never comes up (which is the point of specifying "a number system with a large base"), it's an efficient and sensible way to implement the desired rule.

The issue isn't in the base case but derived cases to determine which overrides the other. A div with an id that has another div with a class attribute should override anything done on just the div with the id? But when does the specificity of any chain of just classes become more specific than an id. That is why they have weights.

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