Conversion to Primitive Types

March 24, 2008 | ActionScript 3, Books, Tips

When I first determined to datatype my codes strictly, I had this illusion that I must assign everything according to their data types. Here’s an example of me being disillusioned :

var age:uint = 2; // hardcoded value for testing
var isBorn:Boolean = ( age == 0 ) ? false : true;
trace( isBorn ); // returns true.
 
age = 0;
isBorn = ( age == 0 ) ? false : true;
trace( isBorn ); // returns false.

As you can see from the above example, it was not pretty. It was only when I read the section of Conversion to Primitive Types in Essential ActionScript 3.0 did it dispels my misconception.

So here’s what I can actually do:

var age:uint = 2;
var isBorn:Boolean = age;
trace( isBorn ); // returns true as well.
 
age = 0;
isBorn = age;
trace( isBorn ); // returns false. Works well!

In another typical scenario, if I wanted to make a movieclip’s visibility to false and alpha to 0, instead of doing:

mc.visible = false;
mc.alpha = 0;

I can just:

mc.visible = mc.alpha = 0;

** Do you see the advantage already? **

More info about type conversions can be found here on Adobe LiveDocs.

Table 1: Conversion to Number

Shows the results of converting various datatypes to the Number type.

Original Data	Result after conversion
undefined	NaN (the special numeric value "Not a Number", which represents invalid numeric data).
null	0
int	The same number
uint	The same number
Boolean	1 if the original value is true; 0 if the original value is false
Numeric string	Equivalent numeric value if string is composed only of base-10 or base-16 numbers, whitespace, exponent, decimal point, plus sign, or minus sign (e.g., "-1.485e2" becomes -148.5)
Empty string	0
"Infinity"	Infinity
"-Inifinity"	-Infinity
Other strings	NaN
Object	NaN

Table 2: Conversion to int

Shows the results of converting various datatypes to the int type.

Original Data	Result after conversion
undefined	0
null	0
Number or uint	An integer in the range -2³¹ through 2³¹-1, out of range values are brought into range using the algorithm listed in section 9.5 of the Standard ECMA-262, Third Edition
Boolean	1 if the original value is true; 0 if the original value is false
Numeric string	Equivalent numeric value, converted to signed-integer format
Empty string	0
"Infinity"	0
"-Inifinity"	0
Other strings	0
Object	0

Table 3: Conversion to uint

Shows the results of converting various datatypes to the uint type.

Original Data	Result after conversion
undefined	0
null	0
Number or int	An integer in the range 0 through 2³¹-1, out of range values are brought into range using the algorithm listed in section 9.6 of the Standard ECMA-262, Third Edition
Boolean	1 if the original value is true; 0 if the original value is false
Numeric string	Equivalent numeric value, converted to unsigned-integer format
Empty string	0
"Infinity"	0
"-Inifinity"	0
Other strings	0
Object	0

Table 4: Conversion to String

Shows the results of converting various datatypes to the String type.

Original Data	Result after conversion
undefined	"undefined"
null	"null"
Boolean	"true" if the original value was true; "false" if the original value was false
NaN	"NaN"
0	"0"
Infinity	"Infinity"
-Infinity	"-Infinity"
Other numeric value	String equivalent of the number. For example, 944.345 becomes "944.45".
Object	The value that results from calling toString() on the object. By default, the toString() method of an object returns "[object className]", where className is the object's class. The toString() method can be overridden to return a more useful result. For example, toString() of a Date object returns the time in human-readable format, such as: "Sun May 14 11:38:10 EDT 2000"), while toString() of an Array object returns comma-separated list of element values.

Table 5: Conversion to Boolean

Shows the results of converting various datatypes to the Boolean type.

Original Data	Result after conversion
undefined	false
null	false
NaN	false
0	false
Infinity	true
-Infinity	true
Other numeric value	true
Nonempty string	true
Empty string ("")	false
Object	true

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2 Comments to “Conversion to Primitive Types”

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Steven Sacks on April 3rd, 2008 at 12:09 am

Instead of a ternary operation (a ? b : c), you can just say

var flag:Boolean = (a == 0);

or

var flag:Boolean = (a == “hello”);

This works really well for things like

private function onButtonClick(e:Event):void
{
var i:int = buttons.length;
while (i–)
{
e.currentTarget.selected = e.currentTarget == buttons[i];
}
}
flashmech on April 3rd, 2008 at 12:15 pm

I love that example! Thanks!