Page History

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For every non-trivial language feature, we should introduce a dedicated child page.

Notation:

• $0, $1, ... are auxiliary variables generated by the compiler, chosen to avoid name-clashes with any other identifiers in scope.
• exp1, exp2, ... (italics) are arbitrary complex ActionScript expressions

Compilation Units

An ActionScript application consists of several compilation units, where one is selected as the application's entry point. A compilation unit is defined in one ActionScript source file, containing a primary declaration and optionally static code. Compilation units are organized in packages.

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"this" is always in scope

TODO

Statements

TODO

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Almost all statements can be mapped one-to-one from ActionScript to JavaScript.
There are only two exceptions: for each and try... catch.

for each

Unlike the for... in loop, the for each... in loop has been introduced to JavaScript later, so to make sure the generated code runs in JavaScript 1.5 browsers, we have to simulate it.

Notation:

• $0, $1 are auxiliary variables generated by the compiler, chosen to avoid name-clashes with any other identifiers in scope.
• <lhs>, <rhs> are arbitrary complex ActionScript expressions
• <block> is an ActionScript code block (the loop body)

Then,

for each (<lhs> in <rhs>) {
  <block>
}

becomes

var $1;
for (var $0 in ($1 = <rhs>)) {
  <lhs> = $1[$0];
  <block>
}

Note that if <block> is not enclosed by curly braces, these have to added, as we add a second statement to the loop body.

try... catch... finally

TODO

Operators

TODO

&&=

TODO

||=

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