User Guide

294 Chapter 2: ActionScript Language Reference

escape()

Availability

Flash Player 5.

Usage

escape(expression:String) : String

Parameters

expression

The expression to convert into a string and encode in a URL-encoded format.

Returns

URL-encoded string.

Description

Function; converts the parameter to a string and encodes it in a URL-encoded format, where all

nonalphanumeric characters are replaced with % hexadecimal sequences. When used in a URL-

encoded string, the percentage symbol (%) is used to introduce escape characters, and is not

equivalent to the modulo operator (%).

Example

The following code produces the result someuser%40somedomain%2Ecom:

var email:String = "someuser@somedomain.com";

trace(escape(email));

In this example, the at symbol (@) was replaced with %40 and the dot symbol (.) was replaced

with

%2E. This is useful if you’re trying to pass information to a remote server and the data has

special characters in it (for example,

& or ?), as shown in the following code:

var redirectUrl = "http://www.somedomain.com?loggedin=true&username=Gus";

getURL("http://www.myothersite.com?returnurl="+ escape(redirectUrl));