Is it bad to pass more arguments than the function declares?
JavaScript allows this, you can pass any arbitrary number of arguments to a function.
They are accessible in the arguments
object which is an array-like object that has numeric properties containing the values of the arguments that were used when the function was invoked, a length
property that tells you how many arguments have been used on the invocation also, and a callee
property which is a reference to the function itself, for example you could write:
function sum(/*arg1, arg2, ... , argN */) { // no arguments defined
var i, result = 0;
for (i = 0; i < arguments.length; i++) {
result += arguments[i];
}
return result;
}
sum(1, 2, 3, 4); // 10
The arguments
object may look like an array, but it is a plain object, that inherits from Object.prototype
, but if you want to use Array methods on it, you can invoke them directly from the Array.prototype
, for example, a common pattern to get a real array is to use the Array slice
method:
function test () {
var args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments);
return args.join(" ");
}
test("hello", "world"); // "hello world"
Also, you can know how many arguments a function expects, using the length
property of the function object:
function test (one, two, three) {
// ...
}
test.length; // 3