User Guide

224 ActionScript language elements
The scope chain used by the with statement to resolve identifiers starts with the first item in
the following list and continues to the last item:
■ The object specified in the object parameter in the innermost with statement.
■ The object specified in the object parameter in the outermost with statement.
■ The Activation object. (A temporary object that is automatically created when a function
is called that holds the local variables called in the function.)
■ The movie clip that contains the currently executing script.
■ The Global object (built-in objects such as Math and String).
To set a variable inside a with statement, you must have declared the variable outside the with
statement, or you must enter the full path to the Timeline on which you want the variable to
live. If you set a variable in a
with statement without declaring it, the with statement will
look for the value according to the scope chain. If the variable doesn't already exist, the new
value will be set on the Timeline from which the
with statement was called.
Instead of using
with(), you can use direct paths. If you find that paths are long and
cumbersome to type, you can create a local variable and store the path in the variable, which
you can then reuse in your code, as shown in the following ActionScript:
var shortcut = this._parent._parent.name_txt; shortcut.text = "Hank";
shortcut.autoSize = true;
Availability: ActionScript 1.0; Flash Lite 2.0
Parameters
object:Object - An instance of an ActionScript object or movie clip.
Example
The following example sets the _x and _y properties of the someOther_mc instance, and then
instructs
someOther_mc to go to Frame 3 and stop.
with (someOther_mc) {
_x = 50;
_y = 100;
gotoAndStop(3);
}
The following code snippet shows how to write the preceding code without using a with
statement.
someOther_mc._x = 50;
someOther_mc._y = 100;
someOther_mc.gotoAndStop(3);