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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-05T05:39:34+00:00

Riddle me this: I have my MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN which calls mouseHandler . The latter looks

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Riddle me this: I have my MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN which calls mouseHandler. The latter looks something like this:

public function mouseHandler(evt:MouseEvent):void
{

    var p:Point = new Point(mouseX, mouseY);

    var objs:Array = new Array(getObjectsUnderPoint(p));

}

Now what I want to know is thusly: will the objs array and p point be overwritten every time, simply causing the previous objs array and p point to be wiped and a new one generated, or…does it just create a new array and point over and over and over? Of course if I trace(objs) it gives me the expected results, but am I chocking up the system in the background without realising? Your expertise would be appreciated.

EDIT: well after learning a fair bit from the answerers -thanks btw- that made me think of something else and, a quick search later, found a way to theoretically reliably remove the references:

var a = null;

Now I appreciate that this is probably not needed as they’ll be GCed at the end of the function, but considering it takes two ticks to write, better safe than sorry, no?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It works like this from what I understand – references for these variables will be lost after function will end. The values will be GC’ed then eventually.

    If you will call the function second time, the new references will be created, and filled with new data, the values of previous references hovewer, may still exist in memory, and wait for Garbage Collector, but that may not necessarily happen! If they have attached listeners, the Flash Player will think that they are still useful, so they will exist in the memory to the end of the application run and listen, and even react to events – even if you theoretically cannot access them anymore.

    Edit:
    In your case whats happening is that you are creating two references that will disappear at the end of the function. They are not related to event listener, the listener creates them, but is not attached to them so it won’t stop GC from collecting them after function will end. You creates an array of references, but that are just references to other objects that values are referred in other places (like the display list), if the array alone is not referred anywhere outside of this function, it should be GCted.

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