Flex/AS3/Flash 9 Casting Problems

Today I noticed something particularly annoying about ActionScript 3/Flex/Flash: Casting.

I know of two ways to cast something from one type to another:

1.  var myvar:Type1 = mything as Type1; // does not work

OR

2.  var myvar:Type1 = Type1 (mything); // works!

I was using the “as” keyword, and I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t cast my string to a number.  I finally drilled down, and replaced it with usage #2 above, and it fixed my issue.

So annoying!