User Guide

About data types 35
You can convert one data type to another using one of the following conversion functions:
Array(), Boolean(), Number(), Object(), String().
In ActionScript 2.0, you can assign data types to variables when you initialize them. The data
types you assign can be any of the built-in types or can represent a custom class that you’ve
created. For more information, see “Strict data typing” on page 41.
String data type
A string is a sequence of characters such as letters, numbers, and punctuation marks. You enter
strings in an ActionScript statement by enclosing them in single (') or double (") quotation
marks.
A common way that you use the string type is to assign a string to a variable. For example, in the
following statement,
"L7" is a string assigned to the variable favoriteBand_str:
var favoriteBand_str:String = "L7";
You can use the addition (+) operator to concatenate, or join, two strings. ActionScript treats
spaces at the beginning or end of a string as a literal part of the string. The following expression
includes a space after the comma:
var greeting_str:String = "Welcome, " + firstName;
To include a quotation mark in a string, precede it with a backslash character (\). This is called
escaping a character. There are other characters that cannot be represented in ActionScript except
by special escape sequences. The following table provides all the ActionScript escape characters:
Strings in ActionScript are immutable, the same as Java. Any operation that modifies a string
returns a new string.
The String class is a built-in ActionScript class. For information on the methods and properties of
the String class, see the “String class” entry in Flash ActionScript Language Reference.
Escape sequence Character
\b
Backspace character (ASCII 8)
\f
Form-feed character (ASCII 12)
\n
Line-feed character (ASCII 10)
\r
Carriage return character (ASCII 13)
\t
Tab character (ASCII 9)
\"
Double quotation mark
\'
Single quotation mark
\\
Backslash
\000 - \377
A byte specified in octal
\x00 - \xFF
A byte specified in hexadecimal
\u0000 - \uFFFF
A 16-bit Unicode character specified in hexadecimal