How to create many objects listening for one event

Question

I'm experimenting with the EventDispatcher class and I have a
test class working. I want to use a loop to create a variety of
movie clips that all listen for an event that gets dispatched every
half a second. I have the event dispatching properly. My problem is
that when creating the objects, the temporary variable I use to
hold each created object has a life that extends beyond the loop in
which it is instantiated. Rather than all five created objects
changing color, only the last one changes color (see the code
below--it lives on the first frame of an FLA file).
This is not entirely surprising when I look at the code --
'this' refers to the global scope and 'square' refers to the last
created object that it pointed to. Here's the resulting trace:
handler runing, square name is square 4
this class name is global
handler runing, square name is square 4
this class name is global
handler runing, square name is square 4
this class name is global
handler runing, square name is square 4
this class name is global
handler runing, square name is square 4
this class name is global
How can I modify this code so that each square object changes
its own color?

Answer 1

graphics.clear in the context of that function handler in my
code would refer not to the squares but to the global scope,
wouldn't it? In which case you'd be clearing all the graphics from
your top level movie. I tried changing 'square.graphics' to just
'graphics' in my handler and my squares just remained the original
steady black.
Your code doesn't use a loop and therefore isn't re-using a
variable. You've escaped my 'logical errors' through brute force.
(BTW, I think my code would work in AS2 if I used the old-school
draw methods). Suppose you had to create 100 objects? Would you
want to manually instantiate each one, typing that function over
and over again? You'd have 500 lines of highly redundant code!
Maybe try your example using a loop instead? I think you'll
find it's pretty tough to sneak any vars like 'i' or 'square' from
the global scope into the handler--the handler refers to the
living, breathing variable rather than it's value at the time the
handler was instantiated. Furthermore, you can't sneak any
information about the square into your handler via the event object
because the event object is created in a totally different place.