Creating instances through loop

Question

Hi.
I´m creating a tiles prototype.
To put the tiles on stage I´m using:
private function addTiles(columnNumber:int, rowNumber:int):void {
for (var i:int = 0; i < columnNumber; i++)
    for(var z:int = 0;z<rowNumber;z++){
     var tile:Tile =Tile(tiles.addChild(new Tile()));
     //remaining of the code not shown
Where "tiles" is the container of each tile.
Is that a good dynamic way to create an instance of a tile?
Question one:
The instance created inside addChild, will be stored in "tile"´s variable?
If yes, after the function "addTiles" finishes executing, the instance of Tile class will
be eligible for garbage collection, right?
Question two:
The reference for the instance created through new Tile(), is "tile" (variable)?
So the instance can be accessed inside the loop scope through the "tile" variable, right?
Question three:
Is there a full path like as2 has?
In as2 if I would trace "tile" it would output 'tiles.tileInstanceName", so I could access the tileInstanceName instance only using the variable "tile".
A full path to the object.
This is not possible anymore?
Thanks

Answer 1

Question one:
As long as they're on the stage, they shouldn't be eligible for garbage collection.  It would be a pain to get to them though since there's no direct reference.
Easiest way to manage this would be to create an array and store them there.
public var tilesArray:Array = new Array();
private function addTiles(columnNumber:int, rowNumber:int):void {
for (var i:int = 0; i < columnNumber; i++)
    for(var z:int = 0;z<rowNumber;z++){
     var tile:Tile =Tile(tiles.addChild(new Tile()));
     tilesArray[z].push(tile);
     //remaining of the code not shown
This creates a 2 dimensional array of your tiles so that tilesArray[0] is all of row 1, tilesArray[1] is all of row 2 etc.
Then later in your code you can access them directly using "tilesArray[0][1], tilesArray[1][2], etc."  or just do another loop to iterate through all of them.
Just make sure to note what order you put them into the array so you know whether tilesArray[0] is the first row or the first column.
Question two:
Correct.  Since you created the tile variable inside that loop it is only accessible by the name tile there.  Outside that loop you would have to access them either through their parent container using something like getChildAt (which can get very clunky and is not recommended) or by storing them in an array as mentioned in the answer to question 1.
Question three:
I never worked much with AS2 so i'm not 100% sure.  In all the work i've done with AS3 i've never come across any sort of direct instance name like that.