Question

i expect some sarcasm but what the heck. i have searched the actionscript reference page and can’t seem to find how to declare simple global variable.

Answer 1

There are a couple of good answers already. I just want to point out that YOU CAN create global variables in AS3. Just create a file, for example, MyGlobal.as in root of your classes folder:

package {
    public var MyGlobal:String = "bla";
}

And you can access it as MyGlobal because it is in the top most package. This technique can be used in several not so destructive ways. For example you can have a global constant which is similar to a singleton but instead of being static it will be just an instance of some class:

package {
    public const MySingleton:IMySingleton = new MySingletonImpl();
}

---

Update; not from the original poster
I had never heard of this before so I put together a quick sample:

In the root directory:

package
{
    public var MyGlobal:String = "bla";
}

A test class:

package com.flextras.stackOverflow
{
    public class MyGlobalTest
    {
        public function MyGlobalTest()
        {
            trace(MyGlobal);
        }
    }
}

And the test application:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<s:WindowedApplication xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009" 
                       xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark" 
                       xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx" initialize="windowedapplication1_initializeHandler(event)">
    <fx:Script>
        <![CDATA[
            import com.flextras.stackOverflow.MyGlobalTest;

            import mx.events.FlexEvent;

            protected function windowedapplication1_initializeHandler(event:FlexEvent):void
            {
                trace(MyGlobal);
                var a :MyGlobalTest = new MyGlobalTest();
            }

        ]]>
    </fx:Script>
    <fx:Declarations>
        <!-- Place non-visual elements (e.g., services, value objects) here -->
    </fx:Declarations>
</s:WindowedApplication>

Run the app and the trace does indeed show up twice with the correct ‘bla’ value.