I want a Child to change Parent's Variable

[Fleetatks]

I understand how scope, passing by reference, and passing a variable to Child/Parent work, but I'm stuck trying to combine the three.

On the main timeline, I have some variables that are instances of a custom class I made.

var customClass1:CustomClass = new CustomClass();
var customClass2:CustomClass = new CustomClass();

Inside a movie clip I made, i have a variable.

var customClass:CustomClass;

Back to the main timeline, I gave the Children (two instances of the movie clip I mentioned) the main timeline's variables:

mc1.customClass = customClass1;
mc2.customClass = customClass2;

Now I want to make it so any changes to mc1.customClass affect customClass1, and any changes to mc2.customClass affect customClass2.

mc1.customClass = mc2.customClass
trace(mc1.customClass.data);//displays the data from customClass2 (like I want it to)
trace(customClass1.data);//displays the old data from customClass1


Any thoughts? Hopefully it is clear.

[Fleetatks]

I figured out a workaround, but I'd still like to know how to do this whole child/parent reference variable thing.

My workaround was to call a function that updates the main timeline's variables whenever I change the child variables, i.e.

function updateCustomClasses(){
customClass1 = mc1.customClass;
customClass2 = mc2.customClass;
}

But like I said, this is only a workaround and I have a feeling that I'm doubling the amount of memory being used by my customClasses since they are all independent instances (instead of simple pointers to the same memory location, like I would want).

[Fleetatks]

Ha! I figured it out. I forgot that the assignment operator does stuff by reference, even when I want a hard copy.

//I wanted to do a soft copy
mc1.customClass = customClass1;
mc2.customClass = customClass2;

//I wanted to do a hard copy, but forgot (somehow) that it will still do a soft copy
mc1.customClass = mc2.customClass

So the solution was to make a function inside of CustomClass that will do hard copies, example:

//inside main time line:
mc1.customClass.HardCopy(customClass2);
//inside the class:
public function HardCopy(c:CustomClass):void{
this.data1 = c.data1;
this.data2 = c.data2;
//and so on...
}