Question

There’s a few questions on stack overflow on this topic but I’m still unclear:

I know the flash engine is single threaded so when it receives an event, does it essentially break off, execute any registered event listeners (in no guaranteed order) then return to the current scope?

If I have this code:

addListener("stuff", function():void {
     // some stuff
});
addListener("stuff", someFunc);
dispatch(new Event("stuff"));
trace("Done.");

I want to know:

Can I guarantee that both listeners have executed by the time I reach the trace(“Done”); line?

edit:

or

can I guarantee that the current function will complete before any of the event listeners execute? ie trace(“Done”); will ALWAYS execute first.

or

Neither.

Answer 1

Yes, you can guarantee both assertions in this exact situation.
Meaning, that if adding your event listeners and dispatching your event is in the same code block it will happen in sequence. However, from a practical POV that’s completely useless.

@kryoko: player events get precedence over user events, but they do not ‘force’ themselves through. Meaning that if user code is running, the player event handling is suspended. That’s why it’s possible to ‘freeze’ a flash movie with heavy, intensive code. (Or with a simple infinite loop, of course)