baroquedub

from: http://www.tutorialized.com/

I often make use of variable variables, because I generally use interpreted languages like PHP. Variable variables are not supported in compiled languages like C++ etc. The same applies for Actionscript. Because I make extensive use of variable variables in PHP, I had some difficulties solving specific problems in Actionscript. Fortunately I found a trick to solve my problem. But before I show you the sample script I will give a short introduction to variable variables in PHP.

Sample PHP script:

//my_var has a string value of “mirza”
$my_var = “mirza”;
//allocate a variable variable of the variable $my_var
$$my_var = 1;
//1st line of code now has the same meaning as $mirza = 1;

In words, with variable variables you can dynamicaly create variable names and give them values!!!

Actionscript

With eval() you can achieve similar results in AS.

//my_var has a string value of “mirza”
my_var = “mirza”;
//allocate a variable variable of the variable my_var
mirza = 1;
//has a value of 1
trace(eval(my_var));

Well, I know that this looks very strange. But I use this method in loops to dynamically create variables like pic1, pic2, pic3.

for(i = 1; i<=5; i++){
 //current variable
 curr_var = eval(pic + '' + i);
 //handle variable…pic1, pic1, etc
}