From AS2 to AS3 what is the equvalent of _root ?

Question

I'm trying to learn Actionscript 2 or 3, with AS2 I eventually figured by trial and error that I could get any named instance and modify it using a string with its name using

var theinstance = "titletext"; // actually exctracted from an array
_root[theinstance].htmlText = "New text with <b>HTML!</b>";

but when trying to convert the code to AS3 _root doesn't exist anymore. According to the migration doc it is somehow replaced by flash.display.DisplayObject.stage but apparently this is not how to do it:

flash.display.DisplayObject.stage[theinstance].htmlText = "New text with <b>HTML!</b>";

and neither is this:

flash.display.DisplayObject.stage.getChildByName(theinstance).htmlText = "New text with <b>HTML!</b>";

How do I get a child by name in actionscript 3?

Answer 1

"flash.display.DisplayObject" is not literally part of the actual code that you call. Rather, the documentation is telling you that the stage property is available on any instance of the DisplayObject class -- for example, a movieClip or a sprite.

For example, if you have a movieClip named foo, you could reference the stage with:

foo.stage

and go from there.

foo.stage.someRootLevelObject.htmlText = "Pretty <b>easy</b>";

Answer 2

Just use either "root" (no underscore) or "stage" depending on exactly what you want to do.

However - Why not just store a reference to the textField in the array instead of a string?