Constantly telling 40 objects to update without for loop?

Hi!

I have about 40 display objects that I need to update on a regular basis. The easiest but presumably less efficient method would be to run a for…in loop over and over again that targets each of the objects and tell them to update, but that just seems wrong somehow.

In AS2 you could assign listeners and broadcast events, but how do I do this in AS3?

I’ve been looking at custom event classes, but I don’t seem to get it. I think the documentation is a bit sparse and I can’t seem to find a good tutorial of what I’m looking for.

Let’s say that whenever I press the space button, 40 different sprites should trace back their individual names to me, or display them inside textfields.

Could anyone perhaps give me a practical example of this so I can see how it’s supposed to be done? Would be awesome, and very helpful!

/ Frank