arguments

The arguments object provides access to the arguments that are passed into a function.

You can refer to a function’s arguments within the function by using the arguments array. This array contains an entry for each argument passed to the function.

The arguments array is available only within a function body. Attempting to access the arguments array outside a function declaration results in an error.

eg.

function Average()
{
   var sum = 0
   for(var i=0; i < arguments.length; i++)
   {
      sum = sum + arguments[i]
   }
   return (sum/arguments.length);
}

You can use the arguments array if you call a function with more arguments than it is formally declared to accept. This technique is useful for functions that can be passed a variable number of arguments.

You can use arguments.length to determine the number of arguments passed to the function, and then process each argument by using the arguments array. (To determine the number of arguments declared when a function was defined, use the Function.length property.)

Example.

function listItems() 
{
   var items = arguments.length
   document.write("<UL>n")
   for (i = 0;i < items;i++)
   {
      document.write("<LI>" + arguments[i] + "n")
   }
   document.write("</UL>n") 
} 

The function may be called as follows:

listItems("Sunday","Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday","Happyday");

The arguments object has some very handy members.

arguments.length

The number of arguments passed into the function.

arguments.callee

This property is a reference to the function that you are in. Which is very handy if you want to get a reference to an anonymous function from inside itself. One good reason for doing this would be in a recursive anonymous function.

function makeFactorialFunc()
{
   return function(x)
   {
      if (x <= 1)
       {
         return 1;
       }
       return x * arguments.callee(x - 1);
   };
}

var result = makeFactorialFunc()(5); // returns 120 (5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1)

arguments.caller

This property is a reference to the function that called the function you are in. This allows you to get access to the entire current callstack which is very handy for debugging.

function myFunc()
{
  if (arguments.caller == null)
  {
    return ("The function was called from the top!");
  }
  else
  {
    return ("This function's caller was " + arguments.caller);
  }
}

There are two other things you can do with the arguments object if you combine it with the fn.apply function.

Pass arguments from function to function.

function Called(a,b)
{
	return (a + " certainly " +  b);
}

function Caller(a,b)
{
	return(Called.apply(this,arguments));
}

Fake arguments by creating an array

function Called(a,b)
{
	return (a + " certainly " +  b);
}

function FakeCaller(a,b)
{
	var l_arguments = new Array();

	l_arguments[l_arguments.length] = a;
	l_arguments[l_arguments.length] = nb;

	return(Called.apply(this,l_arguments));
}

See this test-case for an example of both of these cases.