I'm trying to assign an instance of a movieclip that is on the stage to a variable in Flash Lite 1.1:

set("copy_mc",_level0/message_mc_1);
trace("Original:" add _level0/message_mc_1/:subject); // shows the value of "subject"
trace("Copy:" add copy_mc/:subject); // shows nothing

I've never prorgammed in Flash 4 AS so I'm new to the "old" way of doing things.

What is the proper way to do this?

TIA,

no inheritance in Flash 4, but you could recreate the variable and value
manually:

copy_mc/:subject = _level0/message_mc_1/:subject;

You could do a global copy of all properties with a for loop if you need
to, hope that helps.