ActionScript primarily consists of “fundamental” or “simple” data types which are used to create other data types.
These data types are very similar across few other object Oriented languages.
ActionScript primitive data types
primitive data types are the basic datatypes that are are usally used to create complex data types
- Boolean
- -The Boolean data type has only two possible values: true and false or 1 and 0. No other values are valid.
- int
- -The int data type is a 32-bit integer between -2,147,483,648 and 2,147,483,647.
- Null
- -The Null data type contains only one value, null. This is the default value for the String data type and all classes that define complex data types, including the Object class.
- Number
- -The Number data type can represent integers, unsigned integers, and floating-point numbers. The Number data type uses the 64-bit double-precision format as specified by the IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE-754).
- String
- -The String data type represents a sequence of 16-bit characters. Strings are stored internally as Unicode characters, using the UTF-16 format. Previous versions of Flash used the UTF-8 format.
- uint
- -The uint (Unsigned Integer) data type is a 32-bit unsigned integer between 0 and 4,294,967,295.
- void
- -The void data type contains only one value, undefined. In previous versions of ActionScript, undefined was the default value for instances of the Object class. In ActionScript 3.0, the default value for Object instances is null.
ActionScript 3 some complex data types
- Object
- - The Object data type is defined by the Object class. The Object class serves as the base class for all class definitions in ActionScript. Objects in their basic form can be used as associative arrays that contain key-value pairs, where keys are Strings and values may be any type.
- Array
- - Contains a list of data. Though ActionScript 3 is a strongly typed language, the contents of an Array may be of any type and values must be cast back to their original type after retrieval. (Support for typed Arrays has recently been added with the Vector class.)
- Vector
- - A variant of array supported only when publishing for Flash Player 10 or above. Vectors are typed, dense Arrays (values must be defined or null) which may be fixed-length, and are bounds-checked during retrieval. Vectors are not just more typesafe than Arrays but also perform faster.
- flash.utils:Dictionary
- - Dictionaries are a variant of Object that may contain keys of any data type (whereas Object always uses strings for its keys).
- flash.display:Sprite
- - A display object container without a timeline.
- flash.display:MovieClip
- - Animated movie clip display object; Flash timeline is, by default, a MovieClip.
- flash.display:Bitmap
- - A non-animated bitmap display object.
- flash.display:Shape
- - A non-animated vector shape object.
- flash.utils:ByteArray
- - Contains an array of binary byte data.
- flash.text:TextField
- - A dynamic, optionally interactive text field object.
- flash.display:SimpleButton
- - A simple interactive button type supporting “up”, “over”, and “down” states with an arbitrary hit area.
- Date
- - A date object containing the date/time digital representation.
- Error
- - A generic error object that allows runtime error reporting when thrown as an exception.
- Function
- - The core class for all Flash method definitions.
- RegExp
- - A regular expression object for strings.
- flash.media:Video
- - A video playback object supporting direct (progressive download) or streaming (RTMP) transports. As of Flash Player version 9.0.115.0, the H.264/MP4 high-definition video format is also supported along side standard Flash video (FLV) content.
- XML
- - A revised XML object based on the E4X (Standard ECMA-357); nodes and attributes are accessed differently than ActionScript 2.0 object (a legacy class named XMLDocument is provided for backwards compatibility).
- XMLList
- - An array-based object for various content lookups in the XML class.