5.2 Reference names

Reference names result from various forms of expressions. The two main distinctions in these forms are whether the name is qualified or unqualified, and whether the identifier is a literal identifier or an expression.

The following table shows the kinds of references that include qualified and unqualified, literal and expression names.

	Literal	Expression
Unqualified	`o.id, id`	`o[expr]`
Qualified	`o.q::id, q::id`	`o.q::[expr], q::[expr]`

A qualified or unqualified literal identifier is equivalent to the dynamic form with its expression operand replaced by a string literal representing the literal identifier
An unqualified expression reference results in multiple names (called a multiname), one for every open namespace combined with the string value of the expression expr
A qualified expression reference results in a qualified name that consists of the value of the qualifier q combined with the string value of the expression expr

Comments

No screen name said on Nov 25, 2007 at 8:18 PM :

This seems to be the first place in this document that the :: construct is used. Unfortunately, it is not defined here. I have no idea what it means...

Francis Cheng said on Feb 26, 2008 at 1:49 PM :

The :: operator is a namespace qualifier. You can use it to specify the namespace to which a reference name belongs. In the example q::id, q is the namespace to which id belongs. Here's a link to the language reference entry for the :: operator:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/operators.html#name_qualifier

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