Variables of a child not visible to a function in the child called from its parent?

1

sorry, this is a repeat thread, but couldn’t change the title on the old one, someone must know the solution to this problem, I just dont think i worded it correctly enough for someone who knew what i was talking about to notice last time.

Ive got a movieclip that creates and adds a child mc then calls a function in the new mc. the function runs, but the local vars for the new mc aren’t visible to the function. Is there a special way to call a function so that its scope is in the child, not in the parent ? ( i assume thats where it is, even though a trace of this returns the correct object type )

ie:

[Parent Clip]
–[child clip: movGraph]
–variable ( var thegraph:MovieClip = this; )
–[function loadMe]
–(trace (theGraph); )

calling movGraph.loadMe spits out undefined or null object error, as opposed to
[object movGraph]

obviously i want to do a whole lot more than trace out the object type, and trace(this) in the function returns [object movGraph]. the variable “theGraph” declared in the child isn’t available or its null somehow.

Can anyone tell me where I’m going wrong ? - any help would be appreciated. at the moment I’m having to add all the code in the function instead of the “root” of the child. which really defeats the point.

2

after more testing, I’ve found that while I can call other functions and those functions run stuff in them, nothing seems to have access to the variable data/values. if I can a variable that isn’t declared at all, it’ll spit the dummy on tracing it. it seems to recognise the type of variable, and a number set to a value when traced gives me NaN, a variable declared as a movieclip traces out as null.

Anyone able to help ?

To replicate :

create a new as3 flash file.
create a shape and convert it to a symbol(mc) ( i call the object movGraph for this example ) - include linkage
remove the mc from the stage
<AS> ( in main stage )
var temp:movGraph = new movGraph();
temp.loadme();
</AS>
<AS> (in an actions layer in movGraph)
var theGraph:MovieClip = this;
var xVal:Number = 3;

function hello() {
trace(“hello”);
trace(xVal);
}

function loadme():void {
hello();

}
</AS>

This, when run, will output :

hello
NaN

---- Why ?

3

okay, dont know if this is a workaround or if this is the way its supposed to be, but if i add another function in the child clip called init(), and set the value of xVal there, then the original loadme call outputs a number…

Are variables not initialised with default values when declared in a mc that isn’t on the stage ? thats retarded…