User Guide

Global Functions 45

In Flash 5 or later, you cannot use eval() to dynamically set and retrieve the value of a

variable or instance name, because you cannot use

eval() on the left side of an equation. For

example, replace the code

eval ("var" + i) = "first";

with this:

this["var"+i] = "first"

or this:

set ("var" + i, "first");

Availability: ActionScript 1.0; Flash Lite 1.0 - Flash Player 5 or later for full functionality.

You can use the

eval() function when exporting to Flash Player 4, but you must use slash

notation and can access only variables, not properties or objects.

Parameters

expression:Object - The name of a variable, property, object, or movie clip to retrieve. This

parameter can be either a String or a direct reference to the object instance (i.e use of

quotation marks (" ") is optional.)

Returns

Object - A value, reference to an object or movie clip, or undefined .

Example

The following example uses

eval() to set properties for dynamically named movie clips. This

ActionScript sets the

_rotation property for three movie clips, called square1_mc,

square2_mc, and square3_mc.

for (var i = 1; i <= 3; i++) {

setProperty(eval("square"+i+"_mc"), _rotation, 5);

}

You can also use the following ActionScript:

for (var i = 1; i <= 3; i++) {

this["square"+i+"_mc"]._rotation = -5;

}