Counter Function

var counter:Function = function(count:Array):Function{
	var leng:int = count.length;
	var index:int = 0;
	return counter = function(reset:*=""):Function{
		if (reset=="reset"){
			index = 0;
			return counter;
		}else
		if (reset is Array){
			count = reset;
			return counter;
		}
		trace(count[index % leng]);
		index++;
		return counter;
	}
}

// first time it's called you pass an array
trace("count through the array:");
// you can optionally call trigger the counter by calling the newly
// returned function
counter(["a","b","c"])();
counter();
counter();
trace("change the array:");
// here we choose to simply set the array and not trigger the counter
counter([10,20,40,60,80]);
counter();
counter()
trace("reset the counter:");
// reset and the counter is called 3 times
counter("reset")()()();

/*outputs :
count through the array:
a
b
c
change the array:
10
20
reset the counter:
10
20
40
*/

Today I felt like messing around with functions and this is the result. This snippet shows a strange and interesting technique to create a function that iterates through a given array in a few different ways.

I believe the technical term for this kind of thing is a continuation…

There are a bunch of other posts like this on actionsnippet. Some are purely experimental, others are actually quite useful… these can all be found in the functions category.