At 3:40 PM -0500 1/18/01, Ian Jempson wrote:
>I have a parent script for the connection to my back end application
>server. Up till now I have been creating a new instance of that object and
>storing it in a global variable. I have just read about the actorlist (I'm
>new to Director so I keep discovering these things) and now my current
>thinking is that I should add it to the actorlist so it can receive the
>stepframe message.
>
>Should I carry on using:
>
>set gPSConnection=new(script "cPSConnection")
>add the actorlist,gPSConnection
>
>or
>
>instead should I be using:
>add the actorlist,new (script "cPSConnection")?
>
>I would like to be able to refer to the object by name instead of refering
>to the index in the actorlist since the code will be easier to read and we
>have several programmers who may be working on it.
>
>Also does: the actorlist=[] set all objects in the actorlist to VOID? If so
>does this include any objectss that were in existence prior to being added
>to the actorlist?
>
Yes, you're doing just fine. If you want to get the stepFrame
message, then you need to add your object explicitly to the
actorList. You can do this exactly as you specify above still have
your global variable available to you and other programmers. One
other option is for the object to add itself to the actorList - but
there is really no difference:
on new me
... any set up code
add(the actorList, me)
return me
end
If you set the actorList = [], this will not neccessarily clear your
object. Here's why. When you create the object, you are storing the
object reference in a global (gPSConnection). If you add that object
reference to the actor list, you are in effect, making a copy of the
object reference. So now there are two things that point to that
object. If you clear the actorList, the number of things that point
to the object drops back down to one. If you set the global variable
to VOID (or zero), then the object will really go away because its
"reference count" will go down to zero, a signal to Director that
nobody needs this object anymore and Director can "garbage collect"
it.
Good luck,
Irv
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