Flash MX 2004 --

Operator; a unary operator placed before a single parameter. The typeof operator causes the Flash interpreter to evaluate expression; the result is a string specifying whether the expression is a string, movie clip, object, function, number, or Boolean value. The following table shows the results of the typeof operator on each type of expression:

Parameter	Output
String	string
Movie clip	movieclip
Button	object
Text field	object
Number	number
Boolean	boolean
Object	object
Function	function
null	null
undefined	undefined

Example

In the following example, all instances in a SWF file and their types are traced and displayed in the Output panel.

Comments

harleybl said on Nov 2, 2004 at 11:39 AM :

It seems kind of stupid that typeof button returns "object" instead of button.

headwinds said on Dec 12, 2004 at 9:49 AM :

Perhaps, instead of "object" for the button, it could return "component" as
there are associated graphics...

that's a powerful example but i personally found it a bit beyond my use --
so I wrote this test which simplified things in my mind...

myStringObject = new String();
myObject = new Object();
myMovieClipObject = new MovieClip();
myNumber = 6,
myString = "hello World";
myMovieClip = clipOnStage_mc;
myFunction = findType;

myArray = [myString, myObject, myMovieClip, myNumber, myString,
myMovieClip, myFunction ];

function findType() {
for ( i in myArray) {
var myType: String = typeof (myArray[i]) ;
trace ("type = " + myType);
}
}

findType();

No screen name said on Jul 1, 2005 at 12:27 PM :

A reference to the "instanceof" operator here might address the comments above.

typeof

Availability

Usage

Parameters

Description

Example

Comments