Flash CS3 Documentation

Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Adobe Flash > Data and Data Types > About variables > About operators and variables

About operators and variables

You might wonder about the mathematical symbols in your code. These symbols are called operators in ActionScript. Operators calculate a new value from one or more values, and you use an operator to assign a value to a variable in your code. You use the equality (=) operator to assign a value to a variable:

var username:String = "Gus";

Another example is the addition (+) operator, which you use to add two or more numeric values to produce a new value. If you use the + operator on two or more string values, the strings will be concatenated. The values that operators manipulate are called operands.

When you assign a value, you use an operator to define a value to a variable. For example, the following script uses the assignment operator to assign a value of 7 to the variable numChildren:

var numChildren:Number = 7;

If you want to change the value of the numChildren variable, use the following code:

numChildren = 8;

For more information on using operators in your ActionScript, see About operators.

Flash CS3