Found a nice way to use uints’ default value to my advantage. Have started using them for all my identifier constants in my apps. As they default to 0 (zero) even when uninitialised, as long as I make sure all my constants have a minimum value of 1, all I need to do is set up a global NULL constant of 0 and compare any class properties to that.
I can test properties regardless whether they’ve been initialised or not, so no more looking for nulls or empty strings, etc.
1 2 3 4 5 6 | public static const NULL:uint = 0; public static const STATE_LOADING:uint = 1; public static const STATE_LOADED:uint = 2; public var state:uint; //check state before it has been set: trace( state == NULL ); // true - not inititalised // |