Confusing behavior in AS3 Event Listener code block

[Lei]

suppose we defined some variables outside of the function like this:

    var a:String ;

Then we call some php code to load the query and get results from the database as XML format like these:

    function processSearch():void

{

var phpVars:URLVariables = new URLVariables();

var phpFileRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest("p_search.php");

phpFileRequest.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;

phpFileRequest.data = phpVars;

var phpLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();

phpLoader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.VARIABLES;

phpLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, showResult);

phpLoader.load(phpFileRequest);

}

function showResult(event:Event):void

{

var p_info:XML;

p_info = new XML(event.target.data.systemResult);

a=p.information[0]   //assign value here

}

processSearch();

trace(a)

the confusing part arises here as we can't get this assigned value a outside the scope of this showResult function. We can only race the value inside this function and I'm struggled to find a way to pass data outside this function for further usage.