Any way to have an ActionScript 3 (Flex/AIR) project print to standard output?

Question

Is there any way to have a binary compiled from an ActionScript 3 project print stuff to stdout when executed?

From what I\'ve gathered, people have been go

Answer 1

Redtamarin seems to be able to do this (even though it's still in its infancy):

Contents of test.as:

import avmplus.System;
import redtamarin.version;

trace( "hello world" );
trace( "avmplus v" + System.getAvmplusVersion() );
trace( "redtamarin v" + redtamarin.version );

On the command line:

$ ./buildEXE.sh test.as 

test.abc, 243 bytes written
test.exe, 2191963 bytes written

test.abc, 243 bytes written
test.exe, 2178811 bytes written

$ ./test
hello world
avmplus v1.0 cyclone (redshell)
redtamarin v0.1.0.92

Answer 2

With AIR on Linux, it is easy to write to stdout, since the process can see its own file descriptors as files in /dev.

For stdout, open /dev/fd/1 or /dev/stdout as a FileStream, then write to that.

Example:

var stdout : FileStream = new FileStream();
stdout.open(new File("/dev/fd/1"), FileMode.WRITE);
stdout.writeUTFBytes("test\n");
stdout.close();

Note: See this answer for the difference between writeUTF() and writeUTFBytes() - the latter will avoid garbled output on stdout.

Answer 3

If you are using a debug Flash Player, you can have the Flash Player log trace messages to a file on your system.

If you want real time messages, then you could tail the file.

More info:

http://blog.flexexamples.com/2007/08/26/debugging-flex-applications-with-mmcfg-and-flashlogtxt/

mike chambers

mesh@adobe.com

Answer 4

As you say, there's no Adobe-created way to do this, but you might have better luck with Zinc, it is similar to AIR but provides real OS integration of Flash-based applications. Look though the API docs, there should be something there.