History

This warning has existed in two forms across the three main linters. It was introduced in the original version of JSLint and has remained in all three tools ever since.

• In JSLint and JSHint prior to version 1.0.0 the warning given is "Use the array literal notation []"

• In JSHint since 1.0.0 the warning given is "The array literal notation [] is preferrable"

• In ESLint the warning has always been "The array literal notation [] is preferrable"

The situations that produce the warning have not changed despite changes to the text of the warning itself.

When do I get this error?

The "The array literal notation [] is preferrable" error (and the alternative "Use the array literal notation []" error) are thrown when JSLint or JSHint encounter a call to the Array constructor preceded by the new operator with no arguments or more than one argument or a single argument that is not a number. Here's an example:

var x = new Array(),
    y = new Array(1, 2, 3),
    z = new Array("not a number");

ESLint is slightly more accurate and also warns when it encounters a call to the Array constructor with no arguments, regardless of whether the new operator is present or not. This makes sense because the Array constructor behaves the same way in both situations (ES5 §15.4.1):

When Array is called as a function rather than as a constructor, it creates and initialises a new Array object. Thus the function call Array(...) is equivalent to the object creation expression new Array(...) with the same arguments.

Why do I get this error?

This error is raised to highlight a potentially dangerous and unnecessarily verbose piece of code. Before we look at why that above snippet is potentially dangerous, here's a rewritten version using array literal notation that passes all three linters. Notice that it's significantly shorter:

var x = [];

Since the Array constructor is actually just a property of the global object, it can be overwritten. If it has been overwritten, then it's possible the first example above will generate a type error. For example, if you had run something like Array = 50, a type error would be thrown because Array is no longer a function.

Here's an example in which we overwrite the Array constructor. Note that JSLint, JSHint and ESLint do not know that's what has happened. Therefore, they take the safe approach and forbid the use of the Array constructor completely:

Array = 50;
var x = new Array(); //TypeError: Array is not a function

However there is one relatively common situation in which the Array constructor is correctly used and that's when you need to create an array of specific length. The array literal notation provides no mechanism to do this. All three linters cover this use case and do not warn when they encounter a call to the Array constructor with a single numeric argument:

var x = new Array(10);

In JSHint 1.0.0 and above you have the ability to ignore any warning with a special option syntax. The identifier of this warning is W009. This means you can tell JSHint to not issue this warning with the /*jshint -W009 */ directive.

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