# Identifying movieclips

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/identifying-movieclips/234064>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [July 30, 2007, 7:31am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/identifying-movieclips/234064 "2007-07-30T07:31:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![xEnOn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/85e7bf/32.png) [@xEnOn](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/xEnOn)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2007, 7:31am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/identifying-movieclips/234064/1 "2007-07-30T07:31:29Z")

</div>

i am having a few movie clips laid on the stage. each of these movie clips has a different instance name. these instance name are the ones on the property inspector panel. these movie clips are exported for actionscript from the library and is based on a similar base class. these movie clips will automatically be declared as set in the publish settings.

however, now, when i want to refer to any one of these movieclips, in a way where i identify and compare it from an array of movieclips, the .name property of the movieclips is returning a different value as its instance name and i couldn’t compare using its name. and i guess this is because AS3 works differently from AS2.

what are some of work around in such a scenario?

thanks. 🙂