Associative arrays

An associative array, sometimes called a hash or map, uses keys instead of a numeric index to organize stored values. Each key in an associative array is a unique string that is used to access a stored value.

An associative array is an instance of the Object class, which means that each key corresponds to a property name. Associative arrays are unordered collections of key and value pairs.

ActionScript 3.0 introduces an advanced type of associative array called a dictionary.

Dictionaries, which are instances of the Dictionary class in the flash.utils package, use keys that can be of any data type but are usually instances of the Object class. In other words, dictionary keys are not limited to values of type String.