When do I get this error?

The "Avoid arguments.{a}" error is thrown when JSLint, JSHint or ESLint encounters a reference to the callee or caller property of an arguments object. The text of this warning can therefore be either "Avoid arguments.callee" or "Avoid arguments.caller". JSHint will only raise this warning if the noarg option is set to true. In the following example we have a simple function that calculates the factorial of each number in an array. It uses arguments.callee to call itself recursively:

var numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
numbers.map(function (n) {
    return n < 1 ? 1 : n * arguments.callee(n - 1);
});
// Returns [1, 2, 6, 24, 120]

Why do I get this error?

This error is raised to highlight the use of a deprecated language feature. The code will work as expected in most environments at the moment but support will eventually be dropped.

The callee and caller properties of the arguments object were useful in old versions of JavaScript to achieve recursion in anonymous function expressions as shown in the example above. It works but causes optimization problems for the interpreter and can have the unfortunate effect of causing the value of this to change within the function.

To solve these problems ECMAScript 3 introduced the concept of named function expressions. To avoid this warning modify your code to use them instead:

var numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
numbers.map(function factorial(n) {
    "use strict";
    return n < 1 ? 1 : n * factorial(n - 1);
});
// Returns [1, 2, 6, 24, 120]

Notice the addition of the "use strict" directive in that example. In ECMAScript 5 the use of arguments.callee and arguments.caller were deprecated and removed from strict mode. Attempting to reference either property within a function running in strict mode will cause a type error.

In JSHint 1.0.0 and above you have the ability to ignore any warning with a [special option syntax][jshintopts]. The identifier of this warning is W059. This means you can tell JSHint to not issue this warning with the /*jshint -W059 */ directive.

In ESLint the rule that generates this warning is named no-caller. You can disable it by setting it to 0, or enable it by setting it to 1.