# String manipulation with "this" object

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/string-manipulation-with-this-object/92368>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [October 16, 2003, 8:12am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/string-manipulation-with-this-object/92368 "2003-10-16T08:12:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kkrakatau](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6bbea6/32.png) [@kkrakatau](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/kkrakatau)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2003, 8:12am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/string-manipulation-with-this-object/92368/1 "2003-10-16T08:12:14Z")

</div>

I have a button within a movie clip that passes an identifier to a function like so:

on (release)  
{  
\_root.getname(this);  
}

The function recieves “this” as “\_level0.mc\_main\_menu.game0”

I want to treat the returned value as a string & get the value “game0” from it.

How do I do this?

Am I right in saying that “this” is an object, and I need to convert it to a string first?

p.s - in case your interested - the value “game0” matches an xml node & the function plays a movie clip which is populated by the node attributes.