Newbie Flex question: getting a reference to an object from within a .as file

I am modifying some Flex code written by someone else. There is an mx:text cont开发者_Go百科rol that I want to change the 'text' property of. I know how to do this within the .mxml file in which the control is defined, however I don't know how to do this from within a separate .as ActionScript file. I recall in Flash there is some way to fully qualify the reference by prepending the stage or something like that, but I don't know how to do this in Flex. Thanks.

Is this as file connected with mxml (inherits from it)? If not, you need to pass the reference to mxml class (or Text control) to class in as file.