Remove child function

Question

I have the following function to add movie clips to the stage...
I assume it is the correct way to add movieclips to the stage becuase it works.
function attachMovieClips(){
for (var i=0; i<list_array.length; i++)
{var mySelectFile:selectFile = new selectFile();
mySelectFile.name = "mySelectFile"+i;
mySelectFile.y = (mySelectFile.height + 10)*i;
addChild(mySelectFile);}}
attachMovieClips();
i need a function to remove all the attached movie clips...
I assume i need to use removeChild however everything i've tried hasn't worked...
i should think this is an easy problem if you understand AS3, sadly i don't, i'm not sure why i need to create a class to add a mc to the stage in the first place?... please can someone help... kind regards Jonathan

Answer 1

As you make things you could add them to an array. On these lines:
var removeLaterArray:Array = [];
then in your routine where you make things, you add:
removeLaterArray.push(mySelectFile);
and it any other functions that make things that you also want to remove at the same time, you add those to the array:
removeLaterArray.push(someOtherMovieClip);
At the time you want to remove them all, you would run around the array, and have the item's parent remove that item. Like this:
for(var i = 0;i<removeLaterArray.length;i++){
    var anItem:DisplayObject = removeLaterArray[i];
    anItem.parent.removeChild(anItem);
and perhaps:
removeLaterArray  = null;
to get rid of any lingering references to the objects.
There can be other issues though, like if each of your custom objects sets up its own listeners, ideally you would want to remove those listeners. And so perhaps your selectFile Class might have a dispose method, that removes its listeners and also removes itself:
public function dispose(){
    removeanylistenersImade();
    this.parent.removeChild(this);
I'm sure there are other alternate ways too. Overall I wouldn't worry too much about it, once you have a way that works for the situation you have.