User Guide

62 ActionScript Language and Syntax

Methods created in this way, however, do not have access to any private properties or methods

of the Protean class. Moreover, even references to public properties or methods of the

Protean class must be qualified with either the this keyword or the class name. The

following example shows the

traceProtean() method attempting to access the private and

public variables of the

Protean class.

myProtean.traceProtean = function ()

{

trace(myProtean.privateGreeting); // undefined

trace(myProtean.publicGreeting); // hello

};

myProtean.traceProtean();

Data type descriptions

The primitive data types include Boolean, int, Null, Number, String, uint, and void. The

ActionScript core classes also define the following complex data types: Object, Array, Date,

Error, Function, RegExp, XML, and XMLList.

Boolean data type

The Boolean data type comprises two values: true and false. No other values are valid for

variables of Boolean type. The default value of a Boolean variable that has been declared but

not initialized is

false.

int data type

The int data type is stored internally as a 32-bit integer and comprises the set of integers from

-2,147,483,648 (-2

) to 2,147,483,647 (2

- 1), inclusive. Previous versions of ActionScript

offered only the Number data type, which was used for both integers and floating point

numbers. In ActionScript 3.0, you now have access to low-level machine types for 32-bit

signed and unsigned integers. If your variable will not use floating point numbers, using the

int data type instead of the Number data type should be faster and more efficient.

For integer values outside the range of the minimum and maximum int values, use the

Number data type, which can handle values between positive and negative

9,007,199,254,740,992 (53-bit integer values). The default value for variables that are of the

data type int is 0.