Is there any way to include variables inside strings for printing in Actionscript3?

Question

I find myself always typing something like

Alert.show("blah = " + blah);

In PHP we have

"blah = $blah"

In Ruby we have

"blah = #{blah}"

Do we have anything like that in Actionscript3?

Also...what is the proper name for what we are doing here?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Not sure if you mean the trace() function:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AS3LCR/Flash_10.0/package.html#trace()

As in:

trace("Blah: " + Blah);

Answer 2

If you're asking whether you can include a variable name within a string and have it evaluated as opposed to treated like a literal (like your PHP example), the answer is no. This isn't a feature of the ActionScript language. However, you can achieve something like this by using the StringUtil's substitute method. Here's an example:

StringUtil.substitute("My name is {0} and I am {1} years old", name, age);

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/mx/utils/StringUtil.html