task.tags = foo


into


task.setter_tags(foo)


But hey, I guess they are more special than that then.

@Alex: The “dude, car” string is not a try from me, to pass to strings into the setter. This is just the example here. And no, I would not expect task.tags = "foo", 1, ["foo","bar"] to work. I would expect it to convert my single string var into a one element array.

@Ash: At times, I am not sure myself, what I want to achive

@Senocular:

However, where you can pass any number of arguments to a function call, you can only use one value in an assignment. There’s no way to do something like

target.tags = value, value1, valueN;

If there is no way to pass any number of arguments to a setter, why does the setter with …rest then compile?

I would not expect target.tags = value, value1, valueN; to work, but, given that the setter compiles, I would at least expect target.tags = value; to work.

@Jake: EXACTLY!

you try to do something that make no sens

the rest parametter allow you to pass multi arguments to a function

function foobar( …args )

foobar( 0, 1, 2, 3 ); // args = [0,1,2,3]

put this make no sens for a setter

function set foobar( …args )

obj.foobar = “you can pass only one argument here”;

wen you try to do that
—
var myTags : String = “dude, car”;
var task : Task = new Task();
task.tags = myTags; //here your arg is not magically put into an array
—

so when you try to do that
for each (var tag : Object in tags)

you trying to do that on a String, not an Array
hence the implicit coercion error

I guess what you want is

public function set tags(tags:Array) : void

and

var myTags : String = “dude,car”;
var task : Task = new Task();
task.tags = myTags.split(”,”);

or

var myTags : Array = ["dude","car"];
var task : Task = new Task();
task.tags = myTags;

public function set tags(value:String) : void {
var tags:Array = value.split(”,”);
…….
}

…(rest) is of the Array type, so ActionScript is right to assume that you want to set an Array.

Getters and setters have to be matching in type. If you’re passing in a String to the setter, the getter would return a String. I know you haven’t implemented a matching getter and thats OK, but if you had, it would of had to of returned an Array to match the setter.

Your second block of code works because you’re using
…(rest) correctly. But your implementation is buggy, your myTags string will never be automatically split at the comma in ActionScript. So in the setTags method, your newtags Array will always contain only one String element. Passing the newtags Array to this.tags works because this.tags is expecting an Array. Before you were trying to pass a String.

To use setTags correctly, you would say …

setTags(”foo”, “bar”, “bob”);

target.setTags(value);

can instead be

target.tags = value;

However, where you can pass any number of arguments to a function call, you can only use one value in an assignment. There’s no way to do something like

target.tags = value, value1, valueN;

The closest thing you have to that is assigning an array at which point you’re then back to dealing with one object (where the setter would be defined with one parameter of the type Array).

In that case you would just pass an array:
myProperty = [1, 2, 3];

and the argument for your setter would be of type Array.

Otherwise you would just use a regular method, as in your last example

task.tags = “foo”, 1, ["foo","bar"];