Use of arguments.caller / arguments.callee

ID

javascript.no_caller

Severity

high

Remediation Complexity

trivial

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Reliability

Language

JavaScript

Tags

best-practice, reliability

Description

Reports access to arguments.caller and arguments.callee. Both are deprecated, throw in strict mode (ECMAScript 5+ / ES modules), and inhibit engine optimisations.

Rationale

arguments.caller and arguments.callee are vestigial properties from the early days of JavaScript:

  • In strict mode (and inside ES modules / class bodies, which are strict by default), reading either of them throws a TypeError.

  • Their presence forces engines to materialise extra stack-frame metadata, blocking tail-call elimination and inlining.

  • They tie functions to caller/callee identity in ways that break refactoring tools and obfuscators.

// Bad - throws in strict mode, prevents JIT optimisations
function fact(n) {
  return n <= 1 ? 1 : n * arguments.callee(n - 1);
}

Remediation

Use a named function reference for recursion, or refactor into a named function expression.

// Good - named recursion
function fact(n) {
  return n <= 1 ? 1 : n * fact(n - 1);
}

// Good - named function expression
const fact = function fact(n) {
  return n <= 1 ? 1 : n * fact(n - 1);
};

References