How to shoot at the enemy that is farest forward? - actionscript-3

Question

Okay so this has been bugging me all day so I thought I would post it here. This is such a specific topic that it was basically impossible to find any sort of references on how this would be done.
for (var i:int=0; i<=Main.bloonList.length-1; i++)
{
//loop through the children in enemyHolder
var cEnemy = Main.bloonList[i];//define a movieclip that will hold the current child
//this simple formula with get us the distance of the current enemy
if (Math.sqrt(Math.pow(cEnemy.y - this.y,2) + Math.pow(cEnemy.x - this.x,2)) < 100)
{
shoot(cEnemy);
timer = 0;
}
}
This is the code i have at the moment and i would like to know how to figure out which enemy is the farest along the track. I can find it by using this.
function onEnter(e:Event)
{
distanceTravelled=distanceTravelled+xSpeed+Yspeed
}
But how can I tell the for loop to target the one with the highest value?

Answer 1

Just find the highest distance value by updating a new variable (say for example highestDistEnemy) inside your current for loop. You initialize the variable with the first enemy MovieClip object, and only update it to a new enemy object when that enemy's distance is greater than the previous highestDistEnemy's distance. In code:
if(distance(curEnemyDistance) > distance(highestDistEnemy)) {
highestDistEnemy = curEnemy;
}
where distance just calculates distance as you're already calculating it and initialize highestDistEnemy to Main.bloonList[0] at the start of the loop.

Answer 2

Keep track of the furthest enemy after looping all enemies. At the end shoot.
pseudocode
var maxDistance = 0;
var furthesEnemy = null;
var currentDistance = null;
for (var i:int=0; i<=Main.bloonList.length-1; i++) {
//loop through the children in enemyHolder
var cEnemy = Main.bloonList[i];
//this simple formula with get us the distance of the current enemy
currentDistance = Math.sqrt(Math.pow(cEnemy.y - this.y,2) + Math.pow(cEnemy.x - this.x,2));
if (currentDistance > maxDistance) {
maxdistance = currentDistance;
furthesEnemy = cEnemy;
}
}
shoot(furthesEnemy);