Delay text appearance animation when period appears - actionscript-3

Question

Flash/AS3 noobie here.
I'm attempting to display text letter-by-letter (which is working great). However, I want the animation to delay ~500 milliseconds each time a period/end of sentence is encountered. So far the relevant part of my code looks like this:
public function displayLoop(e:Event):void
{
if (pos == textToDisplay.length - 1)
{
stop();
return;
}
firstParagraph.appendText(textToDisplay.charAt(pos));
if (textToDisplay.charAt(pos) == String.fromCharCode(46))
{
//here's where I want to delay??
}
pos++;
}
In this case, firstParagraph is the name of my dynamic text object, textToDisplay is the String of text that is going to be displayed letter-by-letter, and pos is simply the position we're at when displaying the text, so we can keep track of it.
I'm guessing there's a simple solution to this problem, perhaps using a Timer EventHandler?
I appreciate any help anyone has to offer, thanks!

Answer 1

I think the following will be helpful for coding up what you want:
String.split() - This method will help you split up your paragraph into sentences and store them in an array. (Keep in mind that not all periods are full stops, so perhaps you will need to use some regular expressions to deal with special cases like when they are used as elipsis, or decimals.):
e.g.
textToDisplay.split('.');
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/String.html#split()
Array.shift() - This method will return to you the first element in the array, and then remove it from the array. If you have your sentences stored in an array, you can keep calling shift() to get the next sentence that needs to be shown:
e.g.
var sentences:Array = textToDisplay('.');
var next_sentence:String = sentences.shift();
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/Array.html#shift()
Timer - This object, like you mentioned, will help you create those delay intervals between appending the sentences:
e.g.
var myTimer:Timer = new Timer(1000, sentences.length);
myTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, timerHandler);
myTimer.start();
function timerHandler(e:Event) {
firstParagraph.appendText(sentences.shift());
}
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/utils/Timer.html

Answer 2

No need to track position since the timer has a counter built into it.
import flash.text.TextField;
import flash.utils.Timer;
import flash.events.TimerEvent;
var textToDisplay:String = 'AB.CDE.FGHI.JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
var tf:TextField = new TextField()
tf.width = 500
tf.wordWrap = true
tf.height = 400
addChild(tf)
var timer:Timer = new Timer(100)
timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, onTimer)
timer.start()
function onTimer(e:TimerEvent):void{
timer.delay = 100
tf.appendText(textToDisplay.slice(timer.currentCount-1,timer.currentCount))
if(timer.currentCount == textToDisplay.length){
timer.stop()
}
if(textToDisplay.slice(timer.currentCount-1,timer.currentCount) == '.'){
timer.delay = 500
}
}