ActionScript: The Definitive Guide

Removing Clip Instances and Main Movies

We’ve learned to create and refer to movie clips; now let’s see how to turn them into so many recycled electrons (in other words, blow ‘em away).

The manner in which we created an instance or a movie determines the technique we use to remove that instance or movie later. We can explicitly remove movies and instances using unloadMovie( ) and removeMovieClip( ). Additionally, we may evict a clip implicitly by loading, attaching, or duplicating a new clip in its stead. Let’s look at these techniques individually.

Using unloadMovie( ) with Instances and Levels

The built-in unloadMovie( ) function can remove any clip instance or main movie—both those created manually and those created via loadMovie( ), duplicateMovieClip( ), and attachMovie( ). It can be invoked both as a global function and as a method:

unloadMovie(clipOrLevel);   // Global function
clipOrLevel.unloadMovie( );  // Method

In global function form, clipOrLevel is a string indicating the path to the clip or level to unload. And due to automatic value conversion, clipOrLevel may also be a movie clip reference (movie clips are converted to paths when used as strings). In method form, clipOrLevel must be a reference to a movie clip object. The exact behavior of unloadMovie( ) varies according to whether it is used on a level or an instance.

Using unloadMovie( ) with levels

When applied to a level in the document stack (e.g., _level0, _level1, _level2), unloadMovie( ) completely removes the ...