Get the index in an array of a clicked element in actionscript

Question

I'm trying to create a virtual keyboard.

I have a class VirtualKeyboard which contains an array called keyboard of 26 movieclips, each one representing a letter.

In the main class, I create an object of the class VirtualKeyboard and added an eventlistener on it when a letter is clicked.

I tried this in the event handler:

var objectClicked:Object = event.currentTarget;
var index:uint = virtualKeyboard.keyboard.indexOf(objectClicked);

But the index always returns the value 4294967295.

How can I know which letter was clicked, I mean the index in the keyboard array corresponding to that letter?

The same code is working correctly if I put it in the VirtualKeyboard class, but not from the main class.

cwallenpoole · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-10 04:30:08Z

3

4294967295 is 2^32 - 1. That is what happens when you assign -1 to a uint. It means the value was not found.

Recommendations:

As indexOf returns an int, use int. It's faster anyway.
Use Vectors if you can, that way you can be sure that everything is of the same class.
Is virtualKeyboard.keyboard an array of DisplayObjects, or is it an array of strings or numbers? You have to make sure you are comparing apples to apples, not apples to goats (Also why I recommend Vector).
Don't cast to Object. AS3 has a solid type system -- use it.

answered Aug 10, 2011 at 4:30

cwallenpoole

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