Declare Function (V7)

Declare a function which can later be called with the Call Function action or Call Method action (when defined as a function member.) The f_function_length1 defines the number of bytes that the function declaration uses after the header (i.e. the size of the actions defined in the function.) All the actions included in this block are part of the function body.

Do not terminate a function with an End action.

A function should terminate with a Return action. The value used by the return statement will be the only value left on the caller stack once the function return. When nothing is defined on the stack, null is returned.

Functions declared with this action code byte also support the use of up to 255 local registers (registers 0 to 254 since the f_reg_count byte specifies the last register which can be used plus one). To access the local registers, use the Push Data action with a load register and to change a register value use the Store Register action.

Also, it is possible to control the preloading or suppressing of the different internal variables: this, arguments, super, _root, _parent and _global. All the function arguments can also be ignored. If you write a compiler, you should preload only the variables which are used in the function body. And you should suppress all the variables that are never being accessed in the function body2. If you are writing a smart player, then you may want to avoid creating the variables until they are actually being used (thus when an if() statement ends the function prematurely, you may end up not creating and deleting many of these variables!)

The preloading bits indicate in which register to load the given internal variable. The suppressing bits indicate which internal variable not to create at all. That is, if the preloading bit is not set and the suppressing is not set, then the internal variables are supposed to be created by name (i.e. you can access a variable named "this" from within the function when bits 0 and 1 are zero.)

The f_reg_count parameter must be specified and it tells the player the largest register number in use in this function. This way it can allocate up to 255 registers on entry. By default, these registers are initialized as undefined. The variables automatically loaded in registers are loaded starting at register 1. The internal variables are loaded in this order: this, arguments3, super, _root, _parent and _global. Thus, if you call a function accepting three user parameters and uses the this and _parent special variables, it will load this in register 1, _parent in register 2 and the user parameters can be loaded in registers 3, 4 and 5. User parameters are loaded in registers only if their corresponding f_param_register field is not zero (see swf_params). Also, they don't need to be defined in order.

Note that system variables are loaded AFTER arguments. This means if you put an argument in register 3 and this register is also used for _root, then within the function the register 3 will be equal to the content of _root and the value of the argument won't be available to you. Compilers will know how to avoid this problem.

• 1. A function is limited to 65535 bytes.
• 2. WARNING: note that it is possible to concatenate two strings such as "th" and "is" to generate the name "this" and then do a 'get that variable'. This means a compiler cannot really know whether any of the internal variables are really never going to be used... but who writes code like that, really?!
• 3. WARNING: the registers used for the user arguments is defined in the swf_param structure, it does not need to be in sequence, but must be after all the other special variables.