Flash CS3 Documentation

Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Adobe Flash > Functions and Methods > About functions and methods > About types of methods and functions > About function literals

About function literals

A function literal is an unnamed function that you declare in an expression instead of in a statement. Function literals are useful when you need to use a function temporarily or to use a function in your code where you might use an expression instead. The syntax for a function literal is:

function (param1, param2, etc) {
    // statements
};

For example, the following code uses a function literal as an expression:

var yourName:String = "Ester";
setInterval(function() {trace(yourName);}, 200);

You can store a function literal in a variable to access it later in your code. To do so, you use an anonymous function. For more information, see Writing anonymous and callback functions.

Flash CS3