ActionScript: The Definitive Guide

Name

MovieClip._name Property — the identifier of a clip instance, as a string

Availability

Flash 4 and later

Synopsis

mc._name

Access

Read/write

Description

The _name property specifies the instance name of a movie clip instance as a string. Because it initially reflects the instance name set in the Instance panel during authoring, the _name property doesn’t apply to main movies (the main movie is most easily referred to by the global property _root).

Example

We can use _name to determine whether or not to perform some manipulation of a given clip, as we did when generating a series of star movie clips in Example 10.2.

The _name property may also be used to reassign the identifier of a clip. For example:

// Change ball to circle
ball._name = "circle";

// Now control the former ball as circle
circle._x = 500;

See Also

MovieClip ._target, targetPath( ); Section 13.3.3 in Chapter 13