TechNote (Archived)

Undocumented ASNative no longer points to user's configuration folder

Issue

Prior to Macromedia Flash MX 2004, there was an undocumented function available to Flash called ASnative(a,b)();. This feature was primarily used by component developers.

When specific numbers were placed in the 'a' and 'b' slots, calling ASnative would produce the results of certain Flash functions. For example, calling ASnative(302,0)(); would return a string containing the whereabouts of the Flash Configuration folder. This allowed component developers the ability to retrieve user-specific xml, swf, and jpg files that had been written to the user's configuration folder upon installing MXP Extensions.

Beginning in Flash MX 2004 (v7.2) this function points to the Program Folder of Flash instead of the User's configuration folder. In some cases this has created issues with components created prior to Flash MX 2004.

Reason

Access to ASnative was removed in Flash MX 2004.

Generally speaking, undocumented features are undocumented for a reason and should not be used for production work. They are subject to change at any time.

Ref. (101037)

Solution

In Flash MX 2004 and Flash 8 the correct method for accessing these locations is the JSAPI function MMExecute(). Refer to the documentation for more information about theMMExecute() function (Flash 8 livedocs).