> So how come you don't sub class Array and add an 'on added' event that tells the Player when something is added? One reason is that there is no way that even a subclass of Array could know when children[i] was assigned a new value. (EcmaScript and ActionScript have ino equivalent of a setter function for array elements.) And, of course, there would still be no type safety. Another reason is that Arrays can be sparse -- you can have an Array with elements 0, 1, 17, and 99. The Flash Player team didn't want this model for the children of a DisplayObjectContainer.
> Who cares if Array isn't strongly typed? So long as the Player finds > something that looks and smells like a DisplayObject, wouldn't that be enough? Most people who are writing nontrival apps come to rely heavily on type safety as the single most important thing that the compiler provides. It catches a huge number of bugs when you're writing your app rather than leaving them for your customers to find at runtime. Gordon Smith Adobe Flex SDK Team ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of kjorn Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 1:20 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [flexcoders] Re: Sprite.children --- In [email protected] <mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com> , "Gordon Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Are you asking "Why doesn't Sprite have a 'children' Array rather than a > numChildren property and a getChildAt() method?". The answer to that is > that AS3 lacks strongly typed Arrays, and lacks a way to know when > you've modified an Array. For example, if you pushed a Sprite onto the > Array, the Player wouldn't know to add it to the display list. > > Gordon Smith > Adobe Flex SDK Team > Oh, OK. That is a bit annoying though. So how come you don't sub class Array and add an 'on added' event that tells the Player when something is added? Who cares if Array isn't strongly typed? So long as the Player finds something that looks and smells like a DisplayObject, wouldn't that be enough? Cheers, monk.e.boy
