Statements Versus Actions
If you look through the Flash ActionScript editing environment, you won’t find any reference to the word “statement.” Even Macromedia’s Flash 5 ActionScript Reference Guide uses the terms “Action” and “statement” interchangeably.
Using the term “Action” as a synonym for
“statement” blurs the distinction between several
different ActionScript tools. To see how, open the ActionScript
editor and look in the Actions folder, as shown in Figure 1.2. Under the list of Actions in that folder,
you’ll find the statements we saw earlier in Table 6.1. Interspersed with the statements you’ll
also notice quite a few functions: gotoAndPlay(
)
, getURL( )
, startDrag(
)
, and so on. Although the functions listed as Actions can
be used in statements, they’re technically not unique statement
types—they’re just built-in functions. Statements, some
built-in functions, and event handlers are all called Actions by
Macromedia. Throughout this book, we do not use the generic term
Action. Instead, each Action is described with the term that matches
its formal role in the language: either
statement, function, or
event handler.
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