ActionScript Ranges?

Question

Before I implement it by hand (simple, I know), I am wondering if ActionScript or Flex support ranges?

• You can do it in Ruby: 1..101

• You can do it in .Net: Enumerable.Range(1, 10)

  Can you do this in AS3 or Flex? I just don't want to re-invent the wheel.

Answer 1

There isn't, but if you want, you can do something like this to emulate the syntax:

public class Range {
    public static function get(min:int,max:int):Array {
        var ret:Array = [];
        while(min <= max) {
            ret.push(min++);
        }
        return ret;
    }
}

And then:

    for each(var i:int in Range.get(1,10)) {
        trace(i);
    }

Answer 2

I don't believe their to be for populating an array. I checked the Array, ArrayUtil, and ArrayCollection classes.

I know that theTextInput class has a property called restrict that you can specify a range like 0-9 or a-Z.

Also I found this for setting a charater range: Setting Character Range

But to populate an Array I think you may just have to build a method yourself.

Answer 3

you can use Array's filter() method to populate a new array from a specified range of objects from the principle array.

package
{
import flash.display.Sprite;

public class Test extends Sprite
    {
    private var minRangeIndex:uint;
    private var maxRangeIndex:uint;

    public function Test()
        {
        var myArray:Array = new Array("A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F", "G", "H", "I");
        minRangeIndex = 1;
        maxRangeIndex = 4;

        var rangeArray:Array = myArray.filter(rangeCallback);

        for each    (var element:Object in rangeArray)
                    trace(element);
        }

    private function rangeCallback(element:Object, index:int, array:Array):Boolean
        {
        return (index >= minRangeIndex && index <= maxRangeIndex);
        }
    }
}

//traces:  B, C, D, E

using the filter() method you could actually create an array with several ranges (EX: 1-4 and 8-12) from a principal array in addition to any other type of filtering you would want, such as string matches for searching.