Flash CS3 Documentation

Programming ActionScript 3.0 > Handling errors > Working with the debugger version of Flash Player

Working with the debugger version of Flash Player

Adobe provides developers with a special edition of the Flash Player to assist debugging efforts. You obtain a copy of the debugger version of Flash Player when you install Adobe Flash CS3 Professional or Adobe Flex Builder 2.

There is a notable difference in how the debugger version and the release version of Flash Player indicate errors. The debugger version shows the error type (such as a generic Error, IOError, or EOFError), error number, and a human-readable error message. The release version shows only the error type and error number. For example, consider the following code:

try
{
    tf.text = myByteArray.readBoolean();
}
catch (error:EOFError)
{
    tf.text = error.toString();
}

If the readBoolean() method threw an EOFError in the debugger version of Flash Player, the following message would be displayed in the tf text field: "EOFError: Error #2030: End of file was encountered."

The same code in a release version of Flash Player would display the following text: "EOFError: Error #2030."

In order to keep Flash Player's resources and size to a minimum in the release version, error message strings are not present. You can look up the error number in the documentation (the appendixes of the ActionScript 3.0 Language and Components Reference) to correlate to an error message. Alternatively, you can reproduce the error using the debugger version of Flash Player to see the full message.

Flash CS3