$

The $ object provides a number of debugging facilities and informational methods.

Go to Property Listing | Method Listing

Methods:

about, bp, colorPicker, evalFile, gc, getenv, setenv, sleep, toString, write, writeln

Property Listing

Name	Type	Access	Description
build	String	readonly	The ExtendScript build information.
buildDate	Date	readonly	The ExtendScript build date.
decimalPoint	String	readonly	The character used as the decimal point character in formatted numeric output.
engineName	String	readonly	The name of the current ExtendScript engine, if set.
error	Error	readonly	The most recent run-time error information. Assigning error text to this property generates a run-time error; however, the preferred way to generate a run-time error is to throw an Error object.
fileName	String	readonly	The file name of the current script.
flags	Number	readonly	Gets or sets low-level debug output flags. A logical AND of bit flag values: 0x0002 (2): Displays each line with its line number as it is executed. 0x0040 (64): Enables excessive garbage collection. Usually, garbage collection starts when the number of objects has increased by a certain amount since the last garbage collection. This flag causes ExtendScript to garbage collect after almost every statement. This impairs performance severely, but is useful when you suspect that an object gets released too soon. 0x0080 (128): Displays all calls with their arguments and the return value. 0x0100 (256): Enables extended error handling (see strict). 0x0200 (512): Enables the localization feature of the toString method. Equivalent to the localize property.
global	Object	readonly	A reference to the global object, which contains the JavaScript global namespace.
hiresTimer	Number	readonly	A high-resolution timer, measuring the time in microseconds. The timer starts when ExtendScript is initialized during the application startup sequence. Every read access resets the timer to Zero.
includePath	String	readonly	The path for include files for the current script.
level	Number	readonly	The current debugging level, which enables or disables the JavaScript debugger. One of 0 (no debugging), 1 (break on runtime errors), or 2 (full debug mode).
line	Number	readonly	The current line number of the currently executing script.
locale	String	readonly	Gets or sets the current locale. The string contains five characters in the form LL_RR, where LL is an ISO 639 language specifier, and RR is an ISO 3166 region specifier.Initially, this is the value that the application or the platform returns for the current user. You can set it to temporarily change the locale for testing. To return to the application or platform setting, set to undefined, null, or the empty string.
localize	Boolean	readonly	Set to true to enable the extended localization features of the built-in toString() method.
memCache	Number	readonly	The ExtendScript memory cache size, in bytes.
os	String	readonly	The current operating system version information.
screens	Array of Object	readonly	An array of objects containing information about the display screens attached to your computer. Each object has the properties left, top, right, bottom, which contain the four corners of each screen in global coordinates.A property primary is true if that object describes the primary display.
stack	String	readonly	The current stack trace.
strict	Varies	readonly	Sets or clears strict mode for object modification. When true, any attempt to write to a read-only property causes a runtime error. Some objects do not permit the creation of new properties when true.
version	String	readonly	The version number of the ExtendScript engine. Formatted as a three-part number and description; for example: "3.92.95 (debug)".

Method Listing

String about ()

Shows an About box for the ExtendScript component, and returns the text for the box.

undefined bp ([condition:Varies])

Breaks execution at the current position.

Parameter	Type	Description
condition	Varies	A string containing a JavaScript statement to be used as a condition. If the statement evaluates to true or nonzero when this point is reached, execution stops.

Number colorPicker (color:Number)

Invokes the platform-specific color selection dialog, and returns the selected color.

Parameter	Type	Description
color	Number	The color to be preselected in the dialog, as 0xRRGGBB, or -1 for the platform default.

Varies evalFile (file:File, [timeout:Number=Number])

Loads and evaluates a file.

Parameter	Type	Description
file	File	The file to load.
timeout	Number	An optional timeout in milliseconds. (default: 10000)

Parameter

Type

Description

file

File

The file to load.

timeout

Number

An optional timeout in milliseconds.

(default: 10000)

undefined gc ()

Initiates garbage collection in the ExtendScript engine.

String getenv (name:String)

Retrieves the value of an environment variable.

Parameter	Type	Description
name	String	The name of the variable.

undefined setenv (name:String, value:String)

Sets the value of an environment variable.

Parameter	Type	Description
name	String	The name of the variable.
value	String	The value of the variable.

undefined sleep (msecs:Number)

Suspends the calling thread for a number of milliseconds.

During a sleep period, checks at 100 millisecond intervals to see whether the sleep should be terminated. This can happen if there is a break request, or if the script timeout has expired.

Parameter	Type	Description
msecs	Number	Number of milliseconds to sleep.

String toString ()

Converts this object to a string.

undefined write (text:Varies)

Prints text to the Console.

Parameter	Type	Description
text	Varies	The text to print. All arguments are concatenated.

undefined writeln (text:Varies)

Prints text to the Console, and adds a newline character.

Parameter	Type	Description
text	Varies	The text to print. All arguments are concatenated.