[Codemonkey]

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When you add new flags, move them around or change them a lot, it can be an annoyance to have to update all the flag values each time, making sure they are unique and doubled each time.

To make things a little bit easier, you can use the bitshift operator. The bitshift operator 'knows' you want to store a value as a bit representation, like all the flags we've been defining. Here's an example:

var OLD_ONE = 1;
var OLD_TWO = 2;
var OLD_THREE = 4;
var OLD_FOUR = 8;
 
var NEW_ONE     = 1 << 0; // shift bit 0 left
var NEW_TWO     = 1 << 1; // shift bit 1 left
var NEW_THREE   = 1 << 2; // shift bit 2 left
var NEW_FOUR    = 1 << 3; // shift bit 3 left
 
trace(OLD_ONE == NEW_ONE); // "true"
trace(OLD_TWO == NEW_TWO); // "true"
trace(OLD_THREE == NEW_THREE); // "true"
trace(OLD_FOUR == NEW_FOUR); // "true" 
 

Here's a more practical way:

var shifts:Number = 0;
 
var NEW_ONE     = 1 << shifts++; // 1
var NEW_TWO     = 1 << shifts++; // 2
var NEW_THREE   = 1 << shifts++; // 4
var NEW_FOUR    = 1 << shifts++; // 8 
 

Now you can move the flags around without having to worry about their values.