How to scroll up or down the page to an anchor using jQuery?

I’m looking for a way to include a slide effect for when you click a link to a local anchor either up or down the page.

I’d like something where you have a link like so:

<a href="#nameofdivetc">link text, img etc.</a>

perhaps with a class added so you know you want this link to be a sliding link:

<a href="#nameofdivetc" class="sliding-link">link text, img etc.</a>

Then if this link is clicked, the page slides up or down to the required place (could be a div, heading, top of page etc).

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This is what I had previously:

    $(document).ready(function(){
    $(".scroll").click(function(event){
        //prevent the default action for the click event
        event.preventDefault();

        //get the full url - like mysitecom/index.htm#home
        var full_url = this.href;

        //split the url by # and get the anchor target name - home in mysitecom/index.htm#home
        var parts = full_url.split("#");
        var trgt = parts[1];

        //get the top offset of the target anchor
        var target_offset = $("#"+trgt).offset();
        var target_top = target_offset.top;

        //goto that anchor by setting the body scroll top to anchor top
        $('html, body').animate({scrollTop:target_top}, 1500, 'easeInSine');
    });